Into the Breach
by victor aeternum
Summary: The crew of the Semper Fidelis, warship of the rogue trader Lucius Dynasty, has been petition to assist marooned Imperial Guardsmen. But before the ship even arrive at their destination, the warp has something in store for its eclectic crew. When the true battle for the dominion of Ultra Primaris begins, all will change. This series follows the events of the Butcher's Bill.
1. Chapter 1

_**Into the Breach**_

Pilot Levi Toth waited patiently by his battered shuttle for his client. The lighter, an Argus pattern shuttle, had been in his family's possession for nearly 150 years. His grandfather had acquired it using a lifetime's worth of saving, old navy contacts, and the Emperor's blessing. Ever since, the lighter had taken three generations of his family's men where few had ever been. Beyond Fistae Munda's tempestuous atmosphere.

Barnabus, the lighter, was a cankerous old fart. Stuck in its ways and impervious to correction, but Levi knew how to handle it. Named after his grandfather and sharing quite a few similarities, the lighter was his pride and joy. Despite its homely appearance, Levi had put in extra effort to make him presentable, because today's client was someone special. An authentic outer stellar Rogue Trader, not one of those in-system charter captains that like to boast, but a living breathing scion from a thousand year old dynasty. The contract had come on a gilded scroll with the endorsement of an imperious seeming vice facto named Villaneuva and full payment upfront from a certified counting house, the _Laes Fortinito_ bank. Levi had looked it up, it was the capital city premiere treasury. What the scion of the Lucius dynasty might want with his old dingy was beyond him, but none of his business, every generously overpaid throne was reason enough.

So stock still, in his best body glove, he awaited his patron at landing zone 3H4R, grit blowing in his face from all the neighboring dust offs. Argus lighters were best used as cargo conveyors, stubby things for sure, but sturdy and dependable. Maybe the Rogue Trader wanted to haul up some baubles he had purchased, too precious to transport in his own ships for fear of a rival's treachery. Levi stopped a moment to ponder it uncomfortably, tongue rolling in his mouth. Perhaps this contract was not as much of a blessing as he had originally thought.

The day promised to be like no other, and the star port's habitual dealings only made the experience more surreal for it. Everywhere around him, cargo was being ferried to shuttles of all makes and sizes. His own made all the more puny beside the hundred thousand ton ships that blanketed the periphery landing zones with their shadows. Despite watching the giants defying the planet's gravity, and slowly rising up into the tumultuous skies, he felt every bit the giant. Today was going to be the best day of his long career.

Then his musing was interrupted.

"_Toth and Sons_,is that you?" asked a stranger in an old duster.

"What…" Blinked Levi "yes, that's me, I mean my charter. Who are you?"

The man nodded and whistled loudly at a group of shady men nearby, who then signaled a monstrous looking vehicle to come closer. The massive transport bucked, chortled to life and started to roll on over. It was covered in mismatched armor plates and garish looking paint.

"Alright kid, you were waiting for us, time to load up." Without waiting for an invitation the men walked over to the open cargo ramp and guided the spikey transport into the lighter.

"Kid? Excuse me! No, no no no, I'm waiting for an important client, a Rogue Trader, he's reserved this transport to go out world." Levi chased the man that had addressed him while trying to flag down the thugs. None of which paid him any attention.

"Did you hear me?" He creamed over the clanking machine which was waddling into his cargo bay with all the grace of a dreadnaught. "I'm not available for services!"

The stranger smirked and brushed his long coat open, harnesses and belts cinched tightly to his body and festooned with all manner of lethal implements. He reached into a pouched and flipped a small metal disk, which Levi barely caught before it could smack him in the face. It was a crest, of the Lucius Dynasty, the same that had decorated the gilded scroll. The pilot mouthed his confusion wordlessly and stumbled towards the envoy which was even now swaggering his way up to the cock pit.

Besides him, the monstrous contraption came to a stop, and the thugs started to secure it with loading straps and wheel chocks. They evidently knew what they were doing, even in the heavy gloom of the lighter's cargo section, moving with the confidence of void born deckhands.

Levi was beyond himself, this was not what he had expected. He searched about his modest cargo hold for something to make sense of this travesty, as if something would magically materialize and explain these happenings. From behind the armored slit of the driver's cab he spied the glare of a man, large bloodshot eyes peering out of the darkness, too big for anyone's good, yet intently focused on him. Disdain dripped venomously from them, and the beleaguered pilot immediately knew he wanted to see no more of the man inside the ramshackle contraption. Levi shuddered and sought comfort elsewhere only to notice for the first time the partially hidden armament the thugs bore under their weathered coats.

"This is bad, very bad." One of the thugs, scarred and blinded in one eye, winked at Levi mockingly and drew the attention of his fellows.

"What is it fly boy? See something you like?" he growled with a gravely voice. "No? Well then, maybe you'd like to have a go at knuckles then?" the thugs roared in laughter as they looked up at the drivers cab, its first step as high as most men are tall. A sudden boom echoed from the driver's side door, the entire structure rattling. Levi scampered off in a panic, to mocking jeers, this time accompanied by the resounding guffaw of the mysterious driver the thugs had named Knuckles.

"Alright, first thing's first" Levi said, his voice still shaky. "This is my ship, and you and your men will respect my authority aboard it."

The cramped confines of the cock pit left the long coat wearing stranger craning his neck to look at the pilot's flustered entrance, and subsequent attempt to sit himself down. The chartered pilot's hand were shaking as he buckled his grav harness. Levi glanced sideways to find the stranger, perhaps in his early 30s, waiting on him to continue.

"What?" Sputtered Levi.

"Well, when someone say's first things first, there's usually more… than just that one thing."

"Right, well… you will address me as captain. You will also go sit in the cargo area with the other passengers, and… and you will follow my exact instruction, in all things, until you disembark."

"Nope…" chuckled the stranger. "That's not going to happen kid," and reclined propping his leg up on the co-pilot's instruments.

"Good, and then…wait, what?" Levi blinked a few long moments. Never in his entire career had he been so disrespected. So dismissed. It was _his_ ship for Saint Sandra's sake "What do you mean nope, and stop calling me kid, I'm you're elder by at least a score."

"No, you're not, kid. And I don't take orders from you." The stranger's eyes hadn't left his coat, which he now inspected intently. Evidently, he had been shot at, and he was counting the holes with a disappointed sigh. He then finally met Levi's eyes and smiled so openly and honestly that the pilot was unsettled by it. The stranger had gone from affecting a mien of disinterest to that of warm fellowship in the blink of an eye. Surely the man was mad. Best to leave madmen alone, Levi reminded himself, after all you can't reason with a mad man. And chances were he had a ship full of armed, and very dangerous, mad men aboard.

The burnishes sky cape fell beneath them as the shuttled rose. The feisty thermals that made the conveyer guild so crucial to Fistae Munda seemed to hamper their progress only slightly. At least, to an untrained eye it would have seemed so, but neither man in the cock pit could accurately be described as such.

"What's this bucket of bolts worth anyway?"

Those irreverent words had been the first spoken since dust off and Levi's awkward attempt to assert his authority. The man still had his boots up on the ships instrument, which angered the powerless charter pilot increasingly.

"This ship, is worth more than you will ever have. And to me, it's priceless."

The stranger smirked, "nothing is priceless." Waiting patiently for a response.

With a frustrated grumble, Levi relented, it was obvious that the wretch of a man was intent on pursuing the conversation. His dark eyes had never left Levi's face. The man was a typical bully, the star port's cantinas were filled with his ilk and Levi knew it was best to just stay out of their way. It was wisdom he could hardly allow himself in the confines of the cockpit.

"It's been in my family for as long as I can remember, and flying has been in our blood. It's everything that makes me…me. I don't expect you to understand."

"You'd be surprised. Ever wanted to be something else?" asked the stranger, strangely interested in the subject.

"Than a pilot? No, my father told me stories of how the stars looked once you crossed the threshold. It's what he called it, the shield that holds the bosom of Fista Munda in place. Like a magical portal that leads to… more. I was hooked on flying before I could even walk."

The man snorted, "Romantic bluster, nothing more. It's precious how people wrap things up. All to make their miserable existence bearable, one dream at a time."

"Frak you!" Levi spat. His face was set, grim and hurt. Who was this man to spit on all that gave his life, that of his father, and his grandfather before him, its meaning.

"So you've a spine after all," the stranger laughed, and genuinely apologized before taking his dirty boots off the instruments.

It took a few moments of silence before Levi had fought the rising ire from his stomach. He glided along the gravity tides he was so familiar with, making a daunting flight look easy, weaving between the navigation points that made Fistae Munda's low orbit a graveyard for the inexperienced. Something happened a long time ago, when the imperium was young, which made this world's atmosphere one of the most inhospitable to traverse. A battle that shook the heavens and deployed Dark Age of technology weapons. Fistae Munda had never recovered, not really.

The stranger paid close attention to Levi's manoeuvers, honestly impressed with them. Something raw and genuine welled up from him. Whatever his failings, this man obviously knew the wonders of the void and still felt the wonder of them. He caught himself warming up to the bastard, much against his will. There was something about the man…

"You're not what I expected." Levi finally admitted.

"Thank you," the stranger said, offering a playful smirk.

"No I meant it. At first I was expecting you're noble born master. Pomp and circumstance at hand. Well groomed and dashing. That sort of thing. I was being naïve of course. Why would a distinguished man ever set foot on my shuttle? I should have guessed I'd be taxying his … well whatever you are."

"Lord Sigismund Lucius likes to keep people on their toes. Keep them guessing. Always do the unexpected. The Emperor favors the Bold, he often says. Keeps men like him alive in this business.

Levi was guiding his shuttle out of the worst of the gravity wells, checking his auspex for the location of his destination, the _Semper Fidelis_. Once he locked on to her location, he let old Baranus coast towards her. The stranger was still speaking about the Lucius dynasty with something approaching pride and, surprisingly, eloquence.

"So," Levi asked timidly, "what exactly are we carrying? All I saw was that junker."

The stranger's infectious smile, there it was again. "Knuckles' rig? No that's just to keep him happy. It's important to keep him happy, if you know what I mean."

"I can only imagine, that man seems… dangerous."

"What makes you think he's a man?" chuckled the stranger. He shook his head again. "You never told me what this bird is worth to you."

Levi's discomfort crawled back into his awareness. If this Knuckles character was not a man, then, what was he? What had he gotten himself into, he wonderer again. "It's priceless… I told you."

"It's time we cut to the chase mister Toth," the stranger's tone lost all warmth. "A bird like this is worth fifty thousand on a good day. Yours couldn't fetch more than thirty, I'm guessing. But you seem like the kind of pilot we need right now, your skills anyways. I can get you sixty for it and your services."

"Thousand?" blurted Levi incredulously.

"You're a bad negotiator mister Toth." The man chuckled.

"That's generous, and I'm grateful for you're interest, but I couldn't. I told you, it's a family heirloom."

"That's not what I want to hear, kid." The stranger propped his legs up again, much to Levi's discontent. "We have a few thousand clicks before docking with the _Semper Fidelis_, and you are going to regret not making a deal by the time we get there.

Levi turned to face the man with an icy stare. "Is that a threat?"

"Consider it friendly advice. By now, the proper authorities will have been alerted and the identity of our off world transporter known. You'll be considered guilty by association. The offer is now fifty thousand."

Levi was livid. He knew this had been too good to be true. Such a fat commission. Stupid, stupid man. He yanked at his control and started to turn the shuttle around. A loud, threatening click made him turn his head. The stranger had upholstered an ornate bolt pistol and laid it across his extended legs, muzzle aimed at Levi's chest. Sweat suddenly beaded across the pilot's brow. His mouth achingly parched.

"As I said, you're a very bad negotiator mister Toth. We relieved the high pontiff of his staff of office, you understand. Someone wanted it more than he did, and that person paid very well. Now, if you return to the surface you will be as good as dead, I hear they still hang people on your world. That's a bad way to go, trust me, I've seen it. You can either turn a tidy profit or you can die, you're call."

Levi swallowed painfully, his throat constricting. Bile slowly rising up and threatening to spill from his quivering lips. "You… you can't kill me. I'm the only pilot here."

"You have no idea," the stranger tapped his trigger finger along the side of the weapon.

"Evidently, mister Toth, you under estimate us. You're world's strange gravity wells and hellish thermals were a bit too tricky for me to pull off, but out here, I can easily land this piece of junk. Now don't make me go down to thirty thousand. I know you're worth more than that."

The rest of the flight was spent in silence. The thug had thankfully holstered his weapon, feeling confident in his victory. And why not, Levi was terrified. He could barely keep his hands from shaking as he set the lighter down in the warship's auxiliary hangars. The thugs unloaded the armor plated monstrosity as efficiently as they has loaded it. Knuckles, its driver, all snarls and growls, stepping out to inspect his baby. It was an ork. A massive, tusked, nauseatingly smelly ork. Levi stood at the top of his loading ramp, mouth agape, as the stranger slapped him on his back and chuckled.

"He's nicer than he looks." He offered.

Inside the hangar, dozens of voidsmen bustled about. Everywhere there was movement. Industrial servitors carried impossible loads across the gunmetal grey deck. Maintenance crew serviced other cargo shuttles. A tech-priests, inured to the dangers of radiation and void shock, inspected the outdated ablative shielding of Levi's shuttle and blurted binary disappointment as his personal servitors attended to its tired machine spirit. Levi had never seen such synchronicity and discipline in a work crew, even at the star port he had spent his life traveling to and from.

A lithe well dressed woman walked up to the bottom of the ramp. She wore a dress of such singular craftsmanship that it was impossible to tell whether she was an Imperial noble, a merchant guild diplomat, or a governor's mistress. An escort of smartly dressed armsmen at her side were led by a fiery haired woman in a chief bosum's uniform. Their ceremonial weapons looked more than just parade ready. Amidst them, an elderly gentleman parted from their ranks and came to take the stranger at levi's side's coat. He then replace it with an ornately decorated buccaneer long coat and a tricorn hat.

"I trust you're adventure went well Lord-Captain," offered the attending gentleman.

"As planned Hubert, thank you." The stranger straightened up and affected an air of authority and control. In a blink of an eye, the Lord-captain had gone from hired thug to master and commander.

"You're… You're him," stammered Levi, on the verge of fainting.

"Always do the unexpected mister Toth. Consequently, I apologize for the deception but it was quite necessary to our endeavor. I would, however, be remiss if I didn't win in the bargain. Hubert, please settle mister Toth in his quarters, midship if you please."

The old man raised a thick eyebrow in return. "midship sir? The junior officers will not be pleased." The steward looked Levi up and down, then to Sigismund again.

"He's deserved it Hubert. Besides, he pilots for us now."

"Very well sir," sighed the elder as he took the overwhelmed pilot by the arm and walked him away. The Lord-captain joined up with his entourage, who smartly saluted with the exception of his vice Factotum, and marched at a firm pace.

"You know very well that when you go about, doing what you do, in any way that pleases you, I am the one that has to balance the budget you leave in tatters." The vice factotum scribbled frustratedly on her data-slate.

"Yes Sola, I know. But you're so good with numbers, coming from a forge world and all. And so enticingly beautiful."

The vice factotum rolled her eyes as she began to tabulate expenses and unapproved hiring. "Thank you Sigs, but honestly, you have to stop doing this." Sola's autoquill flitted over her data slate. Numbers and contracts shifting and reprioritizing before they had left the hangar bay. As they walked into the cramped corridors linking the hangar to the ship's spine, Sigismund couldn't help but smile.

The innards of the _Semper Fidelis_ were not pretty, but they were functional. Fielded during the Angevine crusades and a thousand year old, she had fought and scrapped her way through a hostile Calaxis sector all the way into the hands of the Lucius dynasty. Then scrapped some more. Her non-standard pattern hull contained some of the finest, even if some techpriest might say heretical, technology available. Those would not have been the Adeptus Mechanicus who stoked her plasma core to life, or lovingly attended to her machine spirit. Some modules even dated from the dark age of technology itself. All purchased and recovered from countless worlds in the endless quest for profit and adventure that was a Rogue Traders life.

Crewmen hugged the wall as their captain walked the corridors on his way to the command deck. Their reaction turning from awe and loyalty to fidgety fear as they saw the chief bosum trailing behind. Woe any crew that crossed Ribbella the red. The chief bosum was uncompromising. Discipline was her lover and punishment her pleasure. Under her ministration, the crew was one to rival any segmentum Battlefleet in efficiency. She could whip drunken wastes of space into zealous ratings in the time it took to leave one port and arrive at another. Even the detachment of storm troopers, seconded to the warship for a hefty bribe, respected her even if they would never admit it.

Sola's administrative details continued unabated, and mostly fell on deaf ear, as Sigismund finally arrived to his destination. Before his footsteps could ring to and fro a young woman's voice shrieked across the deck.

"Captain on Deck!" every single officer rose from their station at attention, obeying the commander Evangeline Lucius, youngest of Sigismund's half siblings and, for all the old man's insistence, understudy. She was formal, disciplined, authoritative, and barely out of her teens. And though he care for her as any sibling, even a half sibling, could, he resented having her in the command chain and wholly under his responsibility.

"Thank you Eva, no need to stand on formality men, back to work." The deck resumed its busy buzzing as Sigismund climbed the steps to his command throne and was promptly assailed with Evangeline's watch report. He leaned in and whispered in her hear, to which she turned a fiery red and stormed off silently. No need to erode her command in front of the men, after all.

Sola's disapproving features was enough to curb the smile he was trying to hide. "She's a fine young woman Sigs, you shouldn't treat her like that. She is trying to learn and looks up to you." The graceful factotum stood beside the Captain's throne as he reinitialized the command scepter that would signal to the machine spirit the beginning of his watch. Then, he took in the sight of his mighty command deck.

By the standards of most ship, the deck was cramped and undecorated. Banks of cogitators lined every recess of its length, officers and slaved servitors bustling about their surfaces managing the massive amounts of data that traversed them. It had a low ceiling lined with auxiliary power cords and large pic slates that featured the synthesized reports he needed to command. To its fore, a titanic armored steel-cryss bay allowed a humbling sight of the many spires and macrocannon batteries that lined the spine of the ship. Death and destruction within eye sight always reminded him of how much he loved this ship. Fast, lean, powerful, she deserved her role as the sword of the Lucius dynasty. She had none of the _Son of Utramar_'s majestynor the stealth of _The Chariot_, she was not a stately cruiser nor a furtive cage. She was what had founded the Imperium, a warship through and through.

Sigismund snapped out of his reverie at Sola's insistence. "Yes, yes" he waved dismissively. "Do what you do and make it work. You know I trust you." vice factotum Villaneuva slinked off. She knew better then to expect Sigismund to care about the mundane details required to run an empire. He was not like his father, and many sworn to the dynasty feared the day he would come to reign over it.

He rested his arms on his throne and kicked up his feet irreverently onto his command lectern, years of habit placing his heels away from the runes that would send a general quarter alarm ringing across the ship. His comfort was impeded however, by a data slate left behind by the vice factotum, outlying the requests and petitions passed down from his father's senatorum to his care. Why old Anthonid Lucius bothered with the traditions of their far off home world, even after millennia of separation, was beyond him. Especially the tradition that let senior officers of the flagship deliberate on the course of action best suited for the dynasty. It was clearly within the dynasty's charter of trade to do as they willed outside imperial space, why should his father be bound to the opinions of his underlying? He certainly disproved of Sigismund, his eldest son, whether he attended sanatorium sessions or not. It inhibited swift action. Sigismund was yet again thankful his command was a sword-class frigate. No standing on tradition here.

"Boring, nope, boring… pilgrims? Nope." Sigismund skirted through what amounted to a glorified to-do-list until finally settling on one that sounded interesting. A far off world, abandoned after a diversionary action by the Imperial guard, crawling with orks, and petitioned by a noble war heroine. This sounded very promising.

Sigismund turned to him carto-artifex, a glorified map keeper who advised him on the currents of the warp, and called for his attention. The man, if one can say such of thing of a member of the navis nobilite, was a junior navigator with the infamous house Nostromo. He was also insufferably smug, narcissistic, and unfortunately, very good at his trade.

"Master Nostromo," he called to the cloaked figure stood which off to his right. It stood near an alcove with piles of star charts, sipping at a glass of wine worth more than Sigismund's wardrobe.

"Nostromo!" Sigismund called again. Still, the mutant navigator ignored him. "Remi!"

"What!" spat the navigator caustically, finally turning his hooded head towards the lord and master of the _Semper Fidelis_.

"I need an estimate navigator," sighed Sigismund dejectedly. The two often quarreled, this posturing was nothing new. "Some place in the galactic west, Jorunga sector. Relatively close to Persius Gama."

The navigator smacked his lips and put down his wine with purposeful languidly. "Some place, captain? The Jorunga sector has more par secs than you have beard stubble. Which reminds me, incidentally, what do you do that is more important than keeping decently groomed? It's disgusting."

The captain breathed in slowly and left his command throne, scoring a sinuous smile from the Nostromo. He leaned in to allow for a discussion which would be more private. The captain often wished to have the navigator shot for insubordination, but then he would end up elbow deep in reparation to his house. The Navis Nobilite were untouchable. Essential to all warp travel and secured by treaty and contracts the length of a planets equator. Dealing with Remi was taxing, but also essential, Emperor knew the navigator primaris was even more cankerous and incomprehensible. The warp could twist a man and snap his mind in the time it took for his heart to beat twice. These…mutants, spent their lives staring into that daemon infested abyss to guide the ships of the Imperium to safe harbor. It put them in an advantageous position, and they knew it.

"All I need is an approximation, to know if it's possible to get there from here. Or would you rather we run out of air and water before then?"

"You peons might, but we in the spire would be fine. We have… contingencies." The navigator ignored his captain's murderous glare and gathered an esoteric map of the surrounding constants. Each house had its own cyphers, which were partially physical and partially psychic. It was not unlike translating a dream, with the help of notations, and all in the blink of an eye. Even when deciphered, they were cryptic, and required as much intuition as technical expertise. Only the Nostromo could read these chart's cyphers, which made comprehending the implications of even the slightest warp jump possible.

"Yes." Answered the navigator.

"Yes, what?" growled the captain.

"Yes, it is worth it. Yes, we will have enough supplies for your underlying. Yes." The navigator shrugged exasperatedly. "Should I speak slower, perhaps in speak low gothic?"

The Nostromo spoke as if to a dim witted child. He never deigned to use any of the tools at his disposure for such a task, each worth its own fortune. Had the navigator ever been wrong then Sigismund would have had grounds to replace him. But he had, until now, never been.

"But if you want more details then that, I need to know the name of the planet we are expected to arrive. It is essential to coordinate with Navigator Primaris Pater."

"Kursk," grumbled the captain, jaw clenched in restrained anger. "The damn dust ball is called Kursk."

Few places aboard a void ship were as feared as the navigator spire. The enginarium was a mysterious temple dedicated to the machine god, the domain of the Adeptus Mechanicus and their incomprehensible engines. From there the drive master tended the heart of the plasma core, second only to the enginseer prime whose followers were all those sworn to the Omnissiah. Those laymen foolish enough to merit punishment were sent to die within its halls, performing duties fit only for servitors, which many became after they expired from heat exhaustion, radiation poisoning, or unfortunate plasma venting accidents. Given the fact that the _Semper Fidelis_ was one of those rare ships with auxiliary plasma banks, those accidents were common enough to merit dreading.

Those more fortunate were sent to toil in the underdecks where the filth that accumulated across the kilometer and a half long ship was distilled, and where chemical torrents rushed beneath ill maintained gangplanks. Feces and rotting foodstuff pooled in great bilge tanks the size of hive city hab blocks. Saturated engine coolants stored in armored vats hosted hordes of nightmarishly mutated vermin between the recesses of their curvature. It was a dirty, unpleasant life, but barring the occasional flesh eating mutant, it was tolerable. The ship's twist catcher Devros, the man responsible for hunting down the often feral mutants that risked overcrowding the sumps, even enjoy it. In an Imperium that religiously feared the witch, the mutant, and the alien, the twist catcher even put the less savage of them to good use. He fed them in exchange for their help tracking down the dangerous ones, even calling a few friend over the years. It was very lonely in the bilges.

Those even more fortunate worked tirelessly on the gun decks. These were pressed ganged criminals whose home worlds had clamored for the opportunity to hand them over to a generous rogue trader. These indebted slaves hauled shells the sizes of habs, hundreds pulling chains to elevate the ammunition out of their magazines, which fed the macro cannons in time of war. These batteries of monumental size clung from the outer hull, unarmored and vulnerable, ready to fire death and destruction across the unbelievable distances that separated ships in the void. Men here were the first to die in the event of a catastrophic failure, or simply a retaliatory strike. Hundreds would be blow out to freeze and choke to death in the emptiness beyond the hull of the _Semper Fidelis_. But these men also had hope, for a recommendation from their battery captain could see them elevated to the rank of ship rating.

These ratings lived just below the mid decks, in the sweltering heart of the ship between the warp engine and the plasma core, and were trusted enough to be left to toil in small groups or even alone. From sanitation to cookeries, these men and women, ever fearful of returning to their previous lives under the lash, kept the ship's unessential systems functioning. A few with aptitude even progressed further. They became voidsmen, who worked in the lighter bays, armory, and luxury compartments, or crawled through broken life support system to rewire faulty connections. Those who distinguished themselves even further became trusted voidsmen, given free range of most of the ship below the command deck. These few were as free as a civilian could ever hope to be on an imperial ship, allowed shore leave, and even had contact with more than just petty officers.

These officers bunked were midshipmen, separate from everyone else. They ate, worked, slept, and socialized in privileged spaces bestowed them by rank. Pilots, gun captains, bosums, damage control experts, medicae staffers, ministorum clerics, seneschals, and atmospheric reclamators all spent their free watches in the roomier quarters offered to them. They lived, served, and died never meeting another soul below deck.

The last and most powerful caste aboard the ship was the senior staff, whose roles on the ship were the most crucial, and rewarded.

The master at arms, commander of all militant forces aboard the _Semper Fidelis_. The master of ordinance, whose cannon wrought the end of worlds. The master helmsman, whose steady hand guided the warship in the worst of storms. The master of etherics, whose auspex could elucidate the mysteries of entire solar systems within minutes. The chief surgeon, whose skill had saved thousands of wounded and stricken alike. The vice factotum, whose purse knew the wealth of worlds. The first officer, companion and replacement for the captain. And finally, the lord and master, whose decisions dictated the fate of the twenty-five thousand souls that called the ship home.

The command decks berth them all except for two of the most feared and reviled organs of command, loathed for their unnatural calling but whose existence allowed the ship to exist. The witch's tower which housed the choir of astra telepathica psykers, whose minds sent missives across the warp. Even more feared were the denizens of the navigators' spire. While the wards protecting the astropaths from the psychic turmoil of life also allowed the command staff to visit in times of need, no one, for no reason, ever wanted or set foot within the spire that housed the scions of house Nostromo.

House guards armed and armored to the highest standard and independent of the ship's hierarchy defended their masters here. An army onto themselves, they guarded the spire that duplicated every life sustaining function of the ship for the comfort of its guests. A world within a world. Every void ship required one, and although they often differed, they all segregated the mutant strain of humanity bioengineered by the Emperor himself to navigate the hellish realm of the warp. The only means of superluminal travel known to man.

Each navigator possessed a third eye nestled within their brow. Few had ever seen it in the flesh and most who had, died the very instant they witnessed the kernel of the warp's true nature within. Worst yet, the eerie effervescent light of the warp shone through it. It beckoned to be watched, only to then devour the fool who did. Consequently, all navigator bloodlines hid the third eye from sight. The method differed from navigator to navigator but was usually inspired by their own private eccentricities. This spire in particular held the dubious honor of housing three such navigators.

Navigator Primaris Pater Nostromo was the senior most scion. Well past his first century, the decrepit creature was incoherent most days. Once ensconced within the navigator's chair however, Pater came alive and was capable of guiding a ship through the mercurial eddies of the warp for months at a time without more than the trivial matter of eliminating bodily waste, which the chair regulated, along with the vital functions of any who interfaced with it. He was seconded by Remi Nostromo, a skilled navigator who had yet to reach his apex, yet felt well within its reach. Finally, came Meyer, a timid Nostromo will little to no talent in navigation proper, but impressive knowledge of cryptology, psychic imprinting, xenolinguistics, and none too shabby recaff brewing skills. His presence on the ship was felt to be gratuitous, especially by his peer. Ironically enough, he was the most pleasant of the navigators to speak with, as his timid and generally friendly nature made the presence of his murderous third eye bearable, almost. Meyer, at least, had not yet shorn the soul of a spire servant, unlike his fellows.

It was to him that the unpleasant task of awakening his senior had fallen to. Meyer careful entered the sanctum of the Primaris, its stately appointed embellishments rivaling that of a world bound imperial governor. Rich nano-woven silk bandoliers dripped from the tall gothic arches and carved pillars of his dormitory. The floor's authentic hard wood came from a world that had died eons ago. Its dark recesses were impenetrable, and only the shallow death like rhythm of Pater's breathing could be heard.

Holding a tapering candle as the only source of illumination, Meyer approached the sea of covers that snaked over Pater's resting place. Beside it, huddled like a dog at his master's bedside, was the child retainer the Primaris so cruelly fancied. Its eyes reflected the only source of illumination in the gloom that perpetually accompanied his master. The lights, Pater insisted, were uncomfortable to his unnatural sight.

As navigators aged, they were prone to more disturbing mutations then the last. Meyer himself was without hair or any kind on his body, and hid his patagia underneath voluminous robes. Remi's were subtler, he moved with an unnatural grace and his translucent blood sealed any wounds he suffered, healing before it could scar. Pater's were…. Indiscernible, which made them all the more frightening. All that was certain was that the old bat was as mad as a grots' uncle.

"Master," begged Meyer at Pater's bedside. Fearfully, he pressed on. But the creature only fidgeted in its womb like tomb of silk. "Primaris, sir, the captain requests transit." Beside him, the boy's brow furrowed. He knew the folly of waking his master even at such a tender age.

After a few more moments of beckoning, Pater slowly opened his eyes. His pupils, large black voids that threatened to swallow light whole, shot into pinpricks. His lips babbled, but he was not yet fully awake. When the gash on his forehead finally pealed open, the roiling mass that could have one time been an eye shifted towards Meyer. The boy, with his head between his knees began to wretch as the warp seeped into the material world around him. The poor thing was painfully silent, fearful of offending the monster it was bound to. Finally the warp eye closed and Pater stirred into a sitting position.

"What is it?' he rasped, a wet ripping sound that cleared only after further effort. "I rest, imbecile, tell the captain I served him only yesterday!"

Meyer cleared his throat, letting the methuselah blink the cobwebs from his mind.

"My Primaris, you have been sleeping for days. A week almost." It was true, the child was practically skin and bones. No one had fed him, for fear of waking Pater, and the child had clearly feared leaving his master's bedside.

"A week? That long… you say. Then take me to the chair. I can't stand this wretched place. Oh, and extinguish that damnable wick while you're at it, moron."

Meyer quickly found Pater's wardrobe and hid the candle from Pater's sight. He slipped one of the many robes from its perch and handed it to his senior, careful to keep the candle behind his back. After stubbornly struggling with the trappings of his calling, Pater gripped his child retainer's skull and used it as support while he lifted his carcass from the enveloping bed. The Primaris eschewed walking sticks, or any of the hundred staffs they had in the spire. No, he preferred the feeling of human suffering to buoy his dignity. The child would be a suitable support until he grew too tall, a day the poor soul no doubt dreamed of, if it could still dream that is.

As the two navigator walked the corridors from Pater's sanctum to the occulus where the chair awaited them, news spread across the spire that the Navigator Primaris had risen, and all the artificial lumen globes dimmed to practically nothing. Still, the cankerous old man spat a litany of hate. Meyer sighed, he couldn't see in the dark like Pater, so he weathered the storm until the natural lighting of the stars made it possible for both Pater and him to function. With a painful groan, the ancient navigator aligned his body with the mind impulse grafts of the chair, and sagged in relief as he became one with its miraculous engineering.

"Has the ritual sacrifice been prepared?" asked the Primaris.

"It has, master." Meyer had been sure to prepare all the necessary materials. It served no one to upset the old creature, and Pater was notoriously impatient. As if on cue, the Primaris mumbled beneath his breath, nocturnal eyes darting about. His senility and constant awareness of the warp tides around him muddling his perception.

"Its… yes… smooth like… marbles, good. Prepare my wine. Wretch" he spat to no one in particular "opals in night sky… forever burning." The navigator did not suffer the material plane well. He had spent too long peering into the warp, or journeying in his dreams. The trick was knowing which instructions were delusional ranting, and genuine requests. Nodding to the servants hidden around the armor-cryss domed room, Meyer watched them decant expensive amasac into the cupped hand of the child retainer. Peter enjoyed his intoxicants at body temperature.

"The omen, frakwit, is it ready? Purple sheets tying necks in…." Pater muttered darkly, "I hate cheese, it stinks."

Meyer turned to the marble bowl that stood feats away from the navigation chair. It was a classically sculpted bird bath, its polished white slabs veined with pitch black lines. Knowing what Pater wanted, he held out his hands and a hooded servant carrying a gilded cage stepped forth. With practiced gestures, Meyer enticed the dove into his hands, and then snapped its neck. Drawing a silvered blade from another servant's platter, he sliced down the breast of the creature and carved in the sigils of the Nostromo house, letting the blood pool into the bowl bellow. Its pattern would instruct them on the proper way to breach realities and enter the warp.

The disturbing slurping sounds behind Meyer informed him that Peter had already started to imbibe. The dove had bled an image of a willow's roots spreading. Meyer was sure of the omen's meaning.

"The tides favor a diffused entry my Primaris, the paths are narrow but lead to a strong current. Choose well which you travel." Meyer intoned the traditional response to this particular pattern. It was not criticism, but Pater took it as such.

"Bugger off you mindless newt, I guide the ship, not you! Why are my toes so… big?"

Meyer sighed, the servants dispersing before Peter opened his eye and generated the warp miasma that had killed so many of their predecessor. The child was still tipping his fingers against the Primaris' lips when Peter unleashed the hell inside his eye. Meyer looked away as yet another innocent soul was burned from its carcass and sent roiling into the warp. A half cackle drew his attention back to Pater's gibbering.

"Ugh, I did it again. Meyer, come here and pass me the amasec!"

Navigators were far from neurotypical individuals. Their minds were hard wired to process the maddening scape of the warp. Even within bloodlines, navigators experienced the warp differently, for Pater, it was an unbelievable symphony of light, multi-hued and sparkling. It was the only light he could still experience without crippling discomfort. Cords of luminescence guided his way, discord the evidence of warp events or shallow reefs. It was a sea of souls, every one a different note, every one a thought set free into the aether. Pater followed the most soothing melodies, their beauty enchanting, and their expression mirthful.

He was hardwired into the chair, his every synapse firing being translated by the cogitators appended to the miraculous machine. He felt the brushing of the warp as a prickle against his skin, a twitch of his fingers informing the helmsmen dozens of meters beneath him to change course and pursue the symphonies in his mind's eye. The Gellar field, the thin membrane that separated the endlessly shifting sea of souls from the ship, allowed it to exist in this slip stream of raw energy. As daemons smashed themselves against it, Pater felt it across his skin as raking claws. A nod of his head reinforced those sections most at risk. He was part of the ship, his nervous system a messenger to a hundred different systems. Alerting all, protecting all, creating his own symphony of machine and men to rival the aethers.

As part of the ship, Pater lost conscious experience of time. He could have been guiding the ship for hours, days, or weeks. The life sustaining chair maintaining his semi-conscious stupor until they dropped back into real space. Energized by its mysterious powers and the vicarious sensations of the warp, he was more alive now then ever. His endurance of the exhausting effort required to shepherd a ship through the impossible vistas of the empyrean was second to none, but it was not unlimited. Just as a soothing note attracted his attention, his senses taxed, he missed the critical junction that would lead the _Semper Fidelis_ away from a tangling of currents.

The symphony darkened, notes clashing, and generated a cacophonous dissonance that ripped at his mind and sent his skin shivering uncontrollably. The tremors were a tactile manifestation of the Gellar shield wavering. It was losing consistency and weakening, just as the ship barreled into a symphonic movement of singular intensity.

Evangeline watched the master chrono on the command lectern tick away. Seven days, fourteen hours, and thirty-six minutes in the Empyrean with no anomalous report. Her watch had been uneventful so far. One more hour to go before handing it over to Sigs again. Warp travel was never easy. It involved all manner of strange occurrences and because the warp reacted to human emotions, it usually got stranger as the immersion progressed. Not to mention time dilation, which made subjective time keeping, like the chrono Evangeline stared at, little more than a guessing game. Ships that had been in the warp hours had been known to arrive at port months later, and vice versa. Any jump you came out of however, was considered a success. The alternative was all too frightening to contemplate.

As her fingers absently caressed the head of the command scepter slotted in the captain' throne, a rune blinked into existence on the lectern. It informed the commander that the gun decks were experiencing difficulties.

"Master of Ordinance, report!" Evangeline bellowed the order with all the over compensation of a junior officer. The command crew were veterans however and much to her relief, had never complained, obeying succinctly. The Master of Ordinance's gruff voice rang back.

"Aye, aye commander. Reports of a minor altercation within the pressgang crew are in progress along the port side batteries, decks 12 to 16, that's third battery ma'am."

Evangeline's eyes darted across the warning runes, a multitude of neighboring systems now reporting issue, their numbers increasing in quantity and severity. The runes blazed to life so fast she could scarcely understand their meaning. Before she could ask, the command deck erupted in reports, data wafers and binaric chants filling the cramped confine of the bridge.

The ordinance section yelled out as large tremor coursed through the ship. "There was an explosion in the point defense systems bellow third battery sir! Gun captain Everett is confirmed dead sir! Infernus master informed, damage control on their way!"

"Sealing battery sections! Armsmen deployed to the munitions magazines. Chief Ribella reporting for duty in the middeck," the master militant reported to the command throne.

Omnisianic congregator Leitchwig, the techpriest envoy that coordinated the different factions of the Mechanicus across the ship calmly walked up to the commander. The machine priest screeched above the reports and counter orders filling the room.

"Statement: I am receiving a data communion from the drive master and the warp core enginseers. Message: Magos Tesslin wishes me to inform you that whatever you are doing is upsetting the generator, a catastrophic drop out of warp space is a 36% probability if further detonation proceed towards the central deck core."

"But I'm not doing anything," said the young commander, panicking on the command throne. Lights blinked everywhere, data runes scrolled feverishly across her overhead viewers, junior officers were gathering around her with reports from the cogitator banks.

Leitchwig increased the amplification of his vox unit, forcing the officers to clamp their hands over their ears. "Conclusion: then your inactivity is what is going to cause the warp core to malfunction." Answered the congregator matter-of-factly.

"Enough!" screamed the commander at the crowd leering over her, she catapulting herself out of the captain's throne.

She gripped the edge of the command lectern and activated the ship wide vox. "This is commander Evangeline Lucius, acting first officer. Code black is declared, I repeat, code black. All unessential personnel is to report to their berth and await further instruction. This is a complete lock down, effective immediately!"

The junior officers that had gathered around the commander stood stock still, paper sheaf in hand, eyes wide at their commander's sudden resolve.

"What are you waiting for? Go wake my lazy brother up, now!" Evangeline grabbed a report from a midshipman barely her junior in age and scanned it rapidly. A warp riot, madness had claimed part of the crew. The ministorum had performed their rites, and the ship purified before the jump. The Geller shields were still functional. The navigator had not mentioned any problems. Why was this happening, why now?

It was not usually in her purview to negotiate crew disputes, but Sola's role extended far beyond that of vice factotum. Sigs trusted her, depended on her, and she relished the privilege it bestowed upon her. She had been called down to the atmospheric reclamators' hall to discuss the unscheduled termination of their assigned duties. They refused to crawl into the underdecks, not the true underdecks that process the bilge sump, but those that allowed for the maintenance of essential systems between decks. Another guilder had died there this month, due to an electrical mishap.

Were the techpriest inclined to debase themselves in the cramp quarters, this could have been settled, but they claimed a higher calling and refused to assume the role of the lay technicians. They had more important duties, or so their responses expressed. So Sola had been called to convince the reclamators to return to work.

It was in mid argument that the tremor had started, knocking the glasses of recycled water onto the deck floor. The lumen strips that illuminated the hall went next. The gaggle of lay technicians stared dumbly at the ceiling as the red emergency lights came on line and began to debate their significance. Sola tried to reach the bridge for an update but only received an automated message informing her that the vox lines were being prioritized. A few more failed attempts hadn't solved the issue. Then, Evangeline's voice rang out across the hall declaring a code black. It was firm, and concise, befitting the rank she occupied.

"Good girl," smiled Sola. Evangeline was showing the promise the vice factotum knew she possessed deep down. Sola reached across the mediation table and activated the personal vox channel she shared with the captain. It was time to use some of that privilege she worked so hard to earn.

"Sigs, are you there? Can you tell me what is going on?"

"I'm up, I'm up, everything is good." Mumbled a groggy Sigismund.

"No Sigs, all is not good. You're sister just called a code. Care to fill me in?" Sola heard a panicked junior officer get into the captain's vox thief's range. She could only make out half the conversation between him and the captain, but it bode ill.

"Listen, Sola." Sigismund spoke slowly and calmly into the vox. "There's a warp induced mutiny in the battery decks. Where are you?"

"With the reclamator guild," answered the factotum worriedly.

"A little too close for comfort then. The bulkheads are going to be sealed by now, but these bastards have access to plenty of tools. Stay put, arm yourself, and wait for Ribella. She should get to your deck soon enough."

"Understood." Sola stood up and slipped her hand within a carefully designed slit along her dress, reaching for the compact auto pistol Sigs insisted she carry. Checking the slide, just as she had been shown by Ribella, she breathed deeply.

"Alright gentlemen, I suppose you heard the gist of it. Use these tables to barricade the entrances and remain calm. Help is on the way."

The technicians nodded and fumbled to follow her instructions. Being some of the most well treated ratings on the ship, they were unfamiliar of the brutal reality of serving aboard a warship. Violence was inevitable aboard such a ship, though it usually came from outside sources and were met by the armsmen and storm troopers first. The novelty of the experience was terrifying, but Sola was not entirely inexperienced with the concept. Both from before her tenure with the Lucius dynasty, and from her involvement in Sigismund's particular brand of leadership.

The first attempt to breach the bulkheads of the reclamator guild were felt minutes later, and continued for many more minutes after.

Ribella activated her shock maul and readied to face down 2nd battery's mob. Shot gun wielding armsmen breached the compartment bulkhead and spread out to take down the mutineers. They stood in indecisive shock as they took in the scene, their chief bosum included. The warp played terrible tricks on the mind, making someone's worst fear a reality. After butchering their gang mates, the madmen had fallen onto each other in packs. Pressgang workers laid in bloody, battered mess upon the deck corridors. Many had their eyes gouged out or their face bitten off. Dismembered body parts were strewed about and the recycled air reeked of charnel house slaughter.

"Open fire!" ordered the chief. Those condemned souls which remained in the corridors were shred to pieces mid feast or murder. Those caught in their grasps given merciful deaths or tallied up as collateral damage. A spanner wielding man, flesh flayed from his frame, charged Ribella with an inhuman howl. She cracked her baton down on his skull and left the madman convulsing on the deck from the electric discharge.

"Spread out and sweep. Anyone out of their berths is fair game!" Ribella marched down the blood covered corridors, barely wide enough for two men to walk shoulder to shoulder. She had to step over vicious pools of blood that had formed around the victims of the warp madness. Even during the worst of the hive wars she had witnessed as an arbites, never had there been so much senseless killing. A cross section sent two mutineers crashing against her thick armsmen body armor. She used her shoulder to shove the thickly muscled laborers back and shattered the first's knee with a powerful downward strike. The second, waiting for his mate to fall aside, raised a bloodied gaff hook still dripping gore. As he moved towards Ribella, she trust the tip of her maul into his throat. The man folded onto himself with a warble, his vocal cords shocked spastically.

Every stroke of her maul incapacitated a foe in the close quarter confines of the thorough way. Ribella had long mastered urban fighting techniques in her past life, which made her the perfect vanguard. With each further step, shotgun blasts echoed in her wake as the armsmen and bosums under her command let Red Ribella live up to her namesake.

The pacifications proceeded until Ribella's enforcers reached the battery proper. The chasm like component was dozens of meters tall and twice as wide. Gantries and plank ways crossed its section with massive pulleys and chain obscuring line of sight. Barking her orders, Ribella sent her squads up the gantries to secure the high ground. A writhing mass of bodies turned to meet her at the 12th deck's bulk ward, above her, four more decks allowed for the murderous madmen to outflank, or worst, cut off her lines of reinforcement. At least the macro cannon shell magazines had been shut and locked as per warp transit protocol. It would not make her day easier if the mutineers had access to enough ordinance to blow the entire component into the void.

With a deck shaking cry, the mass of frenzied killers waded their way towards her and her firing line. Ribella pressed the transmission stud on her armor's gorget and gave the signal. In seconds, dozens of mutineers flooded the deck with their blood as over watching armsmen on the gantries pumped shell after shell into the riotous mass. Combine with the point blank fire from Ribella's position, the throng had considerably lessened. But not enough to stop the survivors from swarming the chief bosum. She swung her maul with great precision, knocking her assailant to the ground or shocking them into unconsciousness. Finally the mob won out, their filthy hands and bloodied tools hooking into her armor and dragging her to the deck. There she howled, defiantly resisting the doom which crept over her.

The particular mass hysteria that had claimed Ostwick's 36th pressgang had convinced them that the _Semper Fidelis_ burned at the behest of a daemon in the cargo holds. They had battered and butchered all those under its influence and finally reached the forbidden hold, an illusionary blaze hastening their mission. With zealous intent, they set upon breaching the bulk ward door. The 36th had once been murderers and heretics, but they would soon be heroes for saving the ship. The captain would no doubt reward them for having cleansed his domain of those mind controlled freaks and the infamous creature that dwelled in the hold. Warm bunks and easy duties were theirs to be had. All they had to do was breach this gate and slay the creature.

With liberated plasma torches and industrial sheers they set upon the door. Taking it apart to ease its mechanism free. After long minutes they finally managed. With the clanking of heavy cycling gears, they pried the portal open and were wafted with a putrid smell. Hot and humid, the forbidden hold was pitch black and smelled of rotten eggs, fungi, and animal urine. Ostwick's gang leader stepped up to the darkness.

"You're reign is over daemon, it is time you reap what you have sowed. In the Name of the Emperor!"

The leader exploded in a pink mist of pulverized organs as he flew back into the fold of his waiting followers. His chest was collapse and he gargled incoherently as he died in his mates arms. They hurried to raise their improvised weapons and awaited a daemon that never came. Instead, the bristling shape of a muscle bound nob stepped from the darkened hold into the red tinged light. The ork's knuckles were red with the press gang leader's blood.

'Oie! what'cha babbling about? Why yuz gitz messin'with me doorz?" Knuckles panned his bug eyed gaze across the humies. They were covered in blood and froth drooled down their chin. Their bodies were scored with wounds and their cloths were in tatters. They paced back and forth chittering and sizing him up with strangely lit eyes.

"Ya wanna tussle huh?" the beastly ork chuckled darkly as he limbered up. "Capt'n ain't gonna miss gits like yuz, Iz thinks. Go ahead, make Knuckle happy."

In a warp induced howl, Ostwick's 36th charged, and were promptly relieved of duty.

Having armed himself with his family's finery, Sigismund prowled the reclamation deck with Remi at his side. In an uncharacteristic offer, Remi Nostromo joined the captain's efforts to reach the besieged Sola. The two were slowly making their way past discarded bodies. More than once, Remi had cleared an entire corridor of madmen with the blink of his third eye, setting mutineers ablaze and shearing the tethers that bound their souls to their bodies. It was a sobering reminder to always stand behind him and avert your eyes when he unceremoniously stepped up and lowered his hood.

"Why you insist on recruiting such substandard specimens is absolutely moronic, Sigs." Remi had taken to calling the captain by his pet name, like Sola, to chafe him. He covered his brow with his hood as yet another dozen bodies laid smoking at his feet. The smell was strangely reminiscent of grilled grox.

"Not now Remi." Sigismund took point again, his silvered aspis shield raised. The masterfully crafted shield was decorated with a majestic lion's head, and secreted within its core was a refractor module capable of blunting most attacks directed at it. When it worked that is. In his other hand, Sigismund carried an ornate powered gladius, whose energy field could deliver a lethal thrust capable of penetrating even power armor. To remedy any lack of firepower, he also had a forearm mounted storm bolter on the same arm.

In comparison, Remi was unarmed but twice as deadly. He had long enjoyed the threat that his mysterious third eye posed, and had practiced its use extensively. It was the only weapon he needed, even if somewhat indiscriminate, it proved effective. The navigator followed Sigismund's lead silently, his unnatural grace eerily reminiscent of the loathed Eldar race.

"It is never time to discuss your immeasurable lack of leadership is it? How could you let Sola get into such a dangerous situation? Why does she even tolerate you?"

Shots rang out further down the auxiliary thorough way they were using, momentary flashes of light disintegrating the slugs. At least the ancient war spirit of the shield had been attentive. Sigismund triggered a short burst from his storm bolter, the result was a torrent of explosive shells that shredded the mutineer hiding behind a nearby structural support.

"Because unlike you, Nostromo, I'm a pleasant companion to frequent." Retorted Sigismund after the danger had passed.

"We get along swimmingly when I visit her quarters." Remi replied with snarky condescension.

"Wait?" the captain interrupted, lowering his guard to turn towards the navigator. "_You_ were invited to her quarters?" Remi only smirked arrogantly.

Before Sigismund could press the issue, a mutineer flew out from the cross section and crumbled against its bulk ward. The pair dropped into combat stances as Knuckles squeezed into the corridor, a mismatched two-handed axe in his hefty mitts.

Shortly after his first tussle, Knuckles' orky instincts had kicked in and compelled him to assemble the monstrosity he now held. It was a heavy hafted weapon with a mix of miscellaneous collected industrial parts. Knuckles had even added spikey bits to insure maximum rippy-ness.

"Oie, boss man! I waz wundering where ye waz at." The nob almost looked happy, waving in the constrained confines."

"What are you doing here Knuckles? The ship's on lock down." Sigismund tried to step around the pools of blood seeping down the grills of the deck, making his way towards the giant xeno.

"There's fightin," he simply said, shrugging. Sigismund didn't care to press his concern. It was perfect orky logic right there. "Alright then, you're with me and Remi, watch our backs. Just… let us pass."

"Right boss." Knuckles backed up into the cross section and let his humies go first then lumbered behind them. Remi could heart the pop of crushed limbs as the ork followed their lead. He sighed. This is what you get when you mingle, he muttered to himself.

Before long they reached the reclamation guild hall. Discarded tools laid at its bulkhead entrance. The portal itself was in a disgraceful state. Gouges had been melted into the steel and parts of the mechanism were pulled out. It looked like the madmen had actually made the portal less functional in their attempted to open it. Whatever madness had taken them, they still had the sense to abandon this endeavor and move to something more rewarding. From the far off sounds of shotgun blasts, it appeared they had been woefully wrong.

Sigismund exchanged glances with Remi and pointed at the door, as if expecting the navigator's third eye to be able to open it. The eye imparted had many abilities, none as mundane as opening jammed doors. With an incredulous sneer the Nostromo shook his head. Sigs turned to Knuckles.

"You're up buddy. Go at it." Sigs encouraged.

Knuckled nodded emphatically and punched the steel door in appraisal. He moved closer, pressing his slab like face to the portal and banged it again, listening to the reverberation. The ork nodded again and with a toothy grin, ripped the access pad by the portal's frame and gutted the wiring.

Sigismund instinctually looked about for wandering tech-priests, who certainly would not approve of this mishandling of technology. When he realized how unlikely it would be to find a magos wandering the blood stained corridors, in the midst of a warp induced riot no less, he returned his attention to Knuckles.

The brutish ork was chewing on some wires, sparks flying out of his mouth. He seemed inured to the power coursing through them. Like most orks, Knuckles brushed off what would be otherwise be lethal for a man. None the less, after crossing some angrily sparking contacts, Knuckles looked up with a blood shot eye and gave Sigismund a thumbs up. Moments after, the door popped ajar.

"How did you do that?" Remi said astounded.

"I dun know how, I just do," shrugged the brutish xeno. The knowledge was just there when he needed it. Hardwired into his brain by Gork and Mork knows what. Knuckles had an undeniable need to fix stuff, as he put it. He had built his trukk from scrap, same as the axe he held. When he looked at things, visions of destructive machines just filled his mind, the side effect being that he could hotwire a bulkhead on lock down when he needed too, apparently.

Sigismund smiled broadly. The day he had bested Knuckles in combat had been one of the best in recent memory. There was no end of adventures to be had with a big bloke like that. As long as Sigismund held the bigger end of the stick, he could count of Knuckles obeying. He rued the day he wouldn't however, which could be fast approaching. The ork had clearly grown in size since that fateful day, and the captain knew exactly what that meant.

With a curt nod to his fellows, Sigismund slipped passed the half opened door. He relished coming to the aid of damsels in distress. After a few steps into the besieged hall, Sigismund was shot flat onto his back, his xeno weaved buccaneer coat taking the brunt of it.

"Sigs!" yelled Sola, "by the Omnissiah, couldn't you have called out first?" the factotum dropped her autopistol and kneeled at Sigismund's side. Behind her, hidden amidst the improvised barricade, the technicians peeked to see what was happening. Remi and Knuckles slipped into the room seconds after the shot, the ork wrenching the hatch in a screech of tortured metal. The navigator sighed in disappointment. The captain's antics often ended in such ridiculous spectacle. Knuckles on other hand, privately reconsidered his place in the pecking order, his xeno mind urging him to take the opportunity to assert his dominance. The urge abated the moment the captain proved to be unhurt however.

"You really need to work on your reaction to being saved," grunted Sigismund as he sat up with Sola's help.

"Who said I needed help?" the factotum chided.

"Well, seeing as Chief Ribella hasn't arrived yet, I was thinking, maybe, you?"

"Oh, she was here a while ago. She said the deck wasn't safe yet so I volunteered to stay with the technicians while she sabotaged the bulk ward's mechanism to lock us in. you might want to consider giving the woman a raise, you should have seen the state she was in. she looked like she had been trampled by a heard of grox."

With a pained groan the captain stood himself up, rolling his shoulder to ease the stiffness of Sola's shot. She looked up at with an impish smile and Sigismund narrowed his eyes suspiciously, knowing what that look usually forebode.

"What?" Sigismund groaned.

"Oh nothing much, I just negotiated the return of the reclamator's guild services while we were waiting," said the vice factotum playfully, "how was _your_ day?"

All told, the mutiny had been short lived and well contained. Evangeline was praised for her handling of the situation and garnered much deserved respect from the command crew. The cost had been surprisingly high for the pressgangs afflcited by the warp madness. It would warrant another recruitment drive when next they reached safe harbor. When Pater had been call to answer for his lack of forewarning, Meyer had been sent to smooth the issue. It truth, there was not much that could be done. The ship had weathered the empyrean, and that was all that could be asked of the navigator house.

Four days later, the _Semper Fidelis_ broke out of the warp into the Kursk system. The crew had been reorganized by then, and the decks cleared of any remains. Astropathic reports were sent to the _Son of Ultramar_ as protocol required. Sigismund did not doubt he would be required to present an account of the events of the dynasty senatorum. These tedious administrative details always rankled him. There was time before that would happen however, enough to make up for the costly tragedy of their warp jump. According to the petition, the left over forces of an imperial army remained marooned on Kursk, an ork infested world. From the standard Imperial dating system, the poor souls had been on their own for the better part of a decade.

The ship's jaunt, which had subjectively taken only 11 days, had dropped it six months later into material space. This sort of time dilation was common, exemplifying why a retreating imperial force, followed by a demobilization of its regiments, and their subsequent warp transits, had let ten years pass since the unfortunate last stand of Lady Della and her Persephonian comrades. By Administratum standards, this rescue mission had been a lightning fast response.

According to her reports, the men marooned were highly capable and determined. There was hope they still lived, and a noble house's fortune in thrones made Lady Della's insistence on a rescue very palatable to Sigismund. Additionally, an unusual stellar body nicknamed the Beholder held telltale signs of xeno design. If the rescue would go poorly, there was still profit to be had plundering the strange planetoid.

These were the days Sigismund relished being the scion of a rogue trader dynasty. Profit, adventure, and glory awaited. All within his grasp.


	2. Chapter 2

The nebula was wonderfully beautiful. Clouds of brilliant hues parted before the prow of the _Semper Fidelis_. Greens, blues, purples, and golden streams studded with bright foreign stars blanketed the void scape. Its beauty could also prove fatal. Being a relatively small system it had took the ship only two days to arrive within the habitable zone of Kursk. The distance between the mass of roiling plasma that was the system's sun was just perfect for life to exist. Not too far, yet not too close. Gasses could form an atmosphere, water could be found in its liquid form, and life forms could evolve. But not all habitable zones were equal.

From the augury returns, Kursk was a hellish planet, millions like it existed in the galaxy. Practically a wasteland, it had canyons and mountains aplenty but little arable land. Its oceans were chalk full of indigestible minerals, which made even inland sources impossible to drink without filtration due to the planet's natural cycle of water transfer. Finally, the nebula was so dense around the planet that little natural light filtered through. Neither did standard carrier waves for ground to orbit or even intra-system communication. No man had any right to be alive on its surface, which severely cut down the chances of finding the imperial guard survivors, no matter how skilled or motivated they were.

Additionally, the system had been claimed by a tribe of ork which had presumably broken off from the defeated Waaaagh half a sector away. In the years since their defeat the pugnacious greenskins had turned Kursk and its surroundings into their very own paradise. The inherently worthless system became the perfect rallying point. Strategically unimportant enough to fight over and incredibly problematic to assault. It was small, shrouded, packed with aggressive hostiles, and home to the evil omen voidsmen called the Beholder. Only a mad man would set sail within its confines or perhaps a rogue trader, which, at the very least, was ubiquitously synonymous.

An anxious mood hung over the command deck. Not only had the _Semper Fidelis_ weathered a warp riot, but it now skulked within gaseous clouds of void particulates in an effort to pierce the hornet's nest. They had already by-passed three ork patrols, or perhaps they had been supply ships leaving the system, it was hard to say. Ironically, the best way to stay hidden in the void was to figuratively close your eyes and ears, stay quiet, and move as little as possible. This meant shutting down all non-essential systems like the warp core, gun batteries, active auguries, comm arrays, void shields, and letting the plasma core murmur away. They glided along a tenth of their engine's power, letting their accumulated momentum carry them in the direction of the core.

The aging warship detested the skulking, its machine spirit occasionally bucking and groaning, sending pitiful flairs of radioactive energy into the nebulous void. Hopefully, the natural interference of the gas clouds combined with the inattention of the orks would lead them to safety. Still, it was like stomping about in iron clad boots in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm. The crew was painfully aware of their vulnerability.

Long painful hours whittled away with a few course corrections in between. The passive auspex could pick up the comparatively loud orkish ships as they passed by tens of thousands of kilometers away, well within battery range of most void born conflicts. With little more than maneuvering thrusters the _Semper Fidelis_ stole away until finally, they arrived at Kursk. They steadily approached the moment of truth. They would have to ignite the full power of the warship in order to carry out their objective. They would, as certainly as a man holding a lantern in the dark of night, reveal themselves to all their enemies. If any were within effective firing range, it could spell the ship's doom. There would be no time to power the void shields, no time to arm the macrocannons, no time with which to fight back. They would die.

"It is simply not worth it!" insisted Evangeline. She and the masters of the ship were standing at attention on the captain's cupola. The title was exaggerated. The _Semper Fidelis_ had three steps and a raised dais on which the command throne sat, nothing more. "If we power up now we will be dead in the water and surrounded by sharks."

"You're concerns are duly noted little sister but I did not come here with the intention of playing nice with the orks." Sigismund rested his chin against his palm, fingers scratching along his stubbly cheeks. Data streamed across his vid-screens, the very same that the masters of the ship held within their data slates, albeit aggregated.

"The auguries do report the likelihood of at least a few ships from the looks of the returns. One of significantly heavier tonnage than our own, captain." The master of etherics stood at attention. He, like the other senior officers, knew that the captain's mind was already made. The best they could do is inform their lord of the variables at play. The lord of the ship was no fool, although he often did foolish things.

"How are our stores? Is the ship responsive? How fast can she be powered up?" questions after questions, Sigismund demanded answers. Those responsible knowing when they were addressed.

"We can engage intensively my lord, but not extensively. Hit-and-runs mostly," answered Lieutenant Bargast, the master of ordinance.

"She's a little stiff after spending so long in stupor captain, but I can wrangle her to action quick enough," followed Lieutenant Ito, the master helmsman.

"Twenty-three-point-four-six-minutes" vocalized Omnissianic congregator Leitchwig, while the other officers took turns. The magos cared not for etiquette. Data had been requested and so data had been offered.

"Right, swift and sure, we strike then power off. Bargast, have the men prepare some torpedoes first. Ito, I'll want you ready to perform evasive maneuvers, we cut and run at the first sign of being out flanked. Leitchwig, I need your people to get her ready in fifteen minutes, no more. Skip some rites if you have to." Sigismund hadn't finished giving out his orders that the magos was blurting angrily in binary. He turned towards the two officers that had not been addressed yet, their specialty more reactive than proactive. "Keever my old friend, have the armsmen at quarters, the xenos will no doubt want to perform boarding actions.

The master-at-arms was a brutal man, body stitched with scars. He hailed from the Maiden's World, a feudal planet dedicated to producing the wives of the Lucius Dynasty's lords. Keever was a knight of the Ravenwing clan, the same as the first lady dynast, Sigismund's mother. A certain family resemblance could be spied in his traits, only older and more worn than Sigismund's own.

The warrior smashed a fist against his breastplate, "Until my dying breath, Raven's blood." Keever marched away in his knightly regalia. In all the years he had served, he had never abandoned the heraldry of his clan. Even wearing a lathe-wrought facsimile of his feudal plates. The master-at-arms proudly wore the antiquated designs of his clan.

"And you my beautiful Eloquell, inform chief confessor Alabast that we will be needing a battle hymn, if you please." The master of the vox tried to hide her smile, nodded, and returned to her station. Since the day she had taken up her office, her melodious voice had increased crew moral markedly. The fear of imminent battle was always lessened when Mistress Eloquell called upon the crew. Sigismund gripped the arms of his throne firmly and steadied his thundering heart. The Emperor favors the bold, he reminded himself.

The _Semper Fidelis_ came alive with the thrum of power, augurs sweeping the obscured void beyond its hull. Immediately, reports rang across the bridge. A thirty megatonne ork kill kroozer circled Kursk in high orbit to the fore, a smaller attack ship half its size and closer to the _Semper Fidelis_' own tonnage lagged behind it. The Emperor had dealt Sigismund a favorable hand. Ork ships were slow, cumbersome, and packed a powerful arsenal. But with their stern presented, they stood a considerable chance of being disabled before they could turn and present arms.

For long minutes the ships hung in silence as the orkish crews hurriedly assumed battle stations, minutes the _Semper Fidelis_ had needed to spring into action. The ork ships began to turn from Kursk's orbit to bare down on the imperial warship but it was too late. Cutting a diagonal between them, the _Semper Fidelis_ groaned as tremors coursed through its hull. The falchion class warship loosed two plasma warheads at close range, a mere fifty thousand kilometers away. A minute and a half later, as the ponderous kill kroozer struggled to change its heading, the torpedoes crashed into its aft section and exploded with the fury of an unbound star. The kroozer's engines followed suit in a cataclysmic explosion that sheered the stern from the rest of its bulky frame. All hope of it maneuvering into firing position had died with the engine section, a critical advantage for the nimble imperial warship.

"Impact confirmed captain. The torpedoes have breached the enemy's hull and shields." The strained voice of the weapons officer cut through the tense silence of the bridge. "Detonation successful." From across his station, a short range augury junior followed excitedly. "Damage confirmed, read aft section destroyed, I repeat, destroyed!"

The bold tactic had presented the ork attack ship with an opportunity for retaliation. As the kill kroozer's innards burst into the void, the _Semper Fidelis_ cut between the kill kroozer and its lesser escort. The attack vector which had allowed for such a resounding success had placed the warship's starboard within the firing arc of the ork ship. Its 'Eavy prow cannonz roared into life accompanied by rows of dorsal mounted macro cannons. The punishing barrage stripped the _Semper Fidelis_' castellan pattern void shields, each shells easily capable of obliterating whole decks on impact. Ordinance the size of hive city habs crossed the thousands of kilometers separating the warring ships eager to find their mark, few did, but their destructive potential resonated through the halls of the imperial warship. The concussive wave traveled through the hull and rupture oxygen lines and power conduits, setting perilous substances ablaze.

The esoteric designs of the machine-spirit woke and heeded its keeper's prayers for salvation. The ancient technology sensed the peril and reinforced the mighty void shield to stave off the fiery doom at hand. The Adeptus Mechanicus rejoiced in the divine work of the Omnissiah and prepared the rites of rekindling peculiar to the castellan pattern. Just as the void shields began to waver, the kinetic energy of the ork guns simply too much for the systems to successfully shunt into the warp, they ignited anew and rebuffed the last of the enemy's shells to hit their mark. The backup shield brimmed with purpose but its exertion had been costly. Precious, blessed implements of the machine god had been rent asunder by the surge and would need to be replace as well as reconsecrated before a rekindling rite could be performed anew. Sigismund knew all this, knew every eccentric detail of his ship, and would not give the orks another opportunity to harm his ship and its crew again.

"All hands, prepare for new heading. Brace, brace, brace!" the captain commanded into the ship wide vox.

The master of the helm, Ito, drove the maneuvering thrusters to critical levels as he turned the warship about to present a flank bristling with macro batteries. The grav-plates struggled to correct the massive inertia of such a maneuver. Without them the crew would have been bashed and broken against the ship's halls. With them, chief surgeon Magda would only have to treat a few concussions. The bridge crew held to their stations, the groaning of the ship's super structure deafening as it echoed along its bones. Sigismund saw a young ensign lose his footing and slide across the bridge to slam against a firing cogitator. Bargast was a few meters away and spared the effort to pull himself towards the youth. Blood had splattered across the data stacks he had collided with but the master of ordinance's firm nod informed the captain the boy was still alive. Slowly the tilt of the deck rescinded, the armored viewing port magnifying the ork attack ship. A quick barrage would settle things now. Either the _Semper Fidelis_ would visit ruination on their foe or it would be forced to speed off at an opposite heading long enough to disengage.

"All batteries fire at will!" ordered Sigismund.

Curt orders from Bargest sent petty officers yelling into their vox horns. The commands travelling down to the gun captains and to their crew. The pressgangs which had long loaded their macro cannons hurried into the deck trenches, covering their ears and praying to the Emperor for protection. The firing of the colossal guns were powerful enough to liquefy the internal organs of any who stood too near. Then, the warship spoke. The starboard and dorsal batteries fired their turbo shells, twice as powerful as standard thunderstrike ordinance and easily capable of penetrating deep within hostile vessels before detonating. The _Semper Fidelis _punched far above her weight and the attack ship, even one of sturdy orkish make, was woefully armored against the storm it could unleash. The perfectly timed salvo ripped into attack ship's kustom void shields, savagely stripping layer after layer of protection, and finally pummeled the defenseless ship into little more than scrap. From far away, the rogue trader ship's auguries chimed as deeply embedded shells exploded, ripping the inner core of the escort and blasting it apart.

A great cheer rose up at the sight of the dying ship. The command crew reveling in the destruction they had wrought. Better still, casualties had been low, very low. There had been no hull breach and only a few structural issues had resulted from the demanding change of heading the ship had endured. They had even avoided the worst case scenario, a boarding by blood thirsty orks.

Taking its time, the imperial frigate turned about and settled at an easy distance from the stricken kill kroozer. Firing from behind them, the remainder of the ork ship detonated with the brilliance of a new star. For all its brutal armament, it had been as defenseless as a new born. Speed, grace, and firepower always carried the day in Sigismund's mind. And his ship possessed all three in admirable quantity. Their victory had been swift and decisive, but also short lived.

Without warning the void shields ignited again and the warship shook as an unknown foe sought to avenge its kin. Overloaded power lines burst as the bridge was filled with smoke and electrical fires. Officers scrambled in confusion, attempting to control the fires that risked roasting them alive. Only the lobotomized servitors carried on, their once human components bridging the data gulf between the cogitators they were slaved to and the masters which needed it.

"Johnston, whose firing on us?" Sigismund yelled. At his console, the master of etherics examined his readings, six of his juniors operating the many auspex system at their disposal.

"An orbital platform my lord. It was unpowered until now, we couldn't detect it. It has just traverse the planet's curvature and acquired us with its firing solution, I have it now."

A hollowed asteroid came into view, magnified on the viewing port. It was a dense, craggy rok bristling with weapons, a typical orkish construct. Sigismund called to the master of ordinance.

"Bargest, what do we have that can hurt it?"

"Little my lord." The Lieutenant sighed, "Torpedoes will detonate before penetrating deep enough and our batteries are far too inaccurate to strip it of its cannons. Only a boarding action could be of any use to us."

"By the throne!" swore Sigismund. "Deploy the counter measures, Bargest. Ito, get us into boarding range, evasive manoeuvers!"

"Like a leaf on the wind my lord," Ito pulled on the ship's wheel and altered their course. Ancillary modules nestled along the ship's length propelled themselves into the gaseous void, screeching interference and wreaking havoc with target acquisition systems.

"Eloquell, get me Keever!" Sigismund sunk in his command throne. It was out of his hands now. When caught unaware, the skill of the crew counter for more than any order the captain could give. There were simply too many variables to address and the time it took for them to reach the captain's ear was long enough to doom a ship and crew. He had to trust in their training. His command lectern lit with an incoming vox signal.

"Your command my lord," came Keever's growling voice.

"Get the storm troopers ready at the teleportarium. I have a job for them." If the _Semper Fidelis_ had any hopes of getting out of this in one piece, it would need the precision and speed of the storm troopers sworn to its service. Using the teleportarium in the midst of evasive maneuvers was risky, and some of them would undoubtedly die in the attempt, but they were willing and able. Oftentimes it took the bravery of a few to save the lives of thousands. Sigismund knew the weight of his decision. Their deaths would be on his conscience. He would never forget, too many lords were callous to the death toll their orders wrought. Not him, not Sigismund Lucius, he led from the front.

The world of sergeant Barr became a roiling tempus as his body was torn apart and thrown into the warp. The gibbering whispers of untold evil clawed at his disembodied mind for the fraction of a second it took for him to return to the material plane. Then, he fell head first. He smashed against the raw stone of his destination, jagged edges digging into his sides. The disorientation he had train to resist slowly subsided as the scream of his dying men echoed around him.

His unit had materialized in transit, men thrown about in disorderly fashion before gravity took its due. Snortling masses of malformed flesh was the first sight his addled mind could discern. The very same that now swarmed around him and his unit of storm troopers. His instincts kicked in before he could be devoured, lashing out with his fractal knife to slice at the stunted hostile was chewed on his pauldron. Quickly lifting his hellgun, he shot another drooling maw inches from his helmet's face plate.

The boarding party he was leading had somehow teleported into the squig pens the orks used as livestock. All around him, trained killers fought off the meter high creatures with lasfire and sheer instinct. Barr managed to get himself to his feet and blazed away at the toothy orkoids. Seconds had passed since their insertion and already he knew the misfortune of his unit would claim more than its fair share of troopers. With clinical precision he aimed and fired at the squigs around him, the powerful hellguns making short work of them and filling the air with the smell of charred flesh.

"Sound off!" Barr ordered in his helm vox. The troopers were outfitted with sealed carapace armor and a wide variety of killing implements. All of which had been put to good use in this frakked insertion. One by one, the survivors of his unit called out. A quick look through his low-light visor was all he needed to find those who hadn't. Firgal was fused to the rock wall, Thimus was dying painfully, his torso welded to a pen gate, and what he believed was Malador, Yule, and Gallion were in pieces on the straw matted deck.

They were only fifteen troopers left, well within combat effective parameters. "The objective remains attainable. We move out!" Storm troopers were the best of the best, barring the Emperor's own space marines. Raised and trained in the Ecclesiarchy run schola progenium, they had the will, the faith, and the firepower to undertake the most crucial and often suicidal missions given to them. This particular company had been seconded to the Lucius dynasty for its service in flattening Krista Quinto, a heretic world. The troopers knew there was more to it, but they hadn't been trained to ask questions. They had been trained to kill.

They put those skills to the test as they navigated the lightless corridors of the ork rok. Some might have described the haphazard tunnels as a rat maze, but they would have been wrong. Orks didn't possess the rational minds required to craft such a pattern. It was all twisted and dead-end tunnels. The twists and turns didn't slow the assault team down however. They moved with a confidence and purpose that revealed a clear intent, lighting up the orks and gretchin swarming in the darkness.

The orks might have had good night vision, but it paled in comparison to the performance of the storm trooper's photovisors. Again and again the orks rallied to crush the rapidly moving assault team but they couldn't keep their enemy contained. The storm troopers collapsed tunnels after tunnels with their melta charges, liquefying the rock until the natural structure folded onto itself, denying the massing greenskins at every turn. Theirs was a text book blitzkrieg but even the efficiency they were renowned for had its limits. Eventually, the orks caught the troopers in a vice.

Barr was taking cover behind a row of stalagmite as his unit laid down suppressive fire. There were three points of ingress into their little hollow. Frag grenades flew into the corridors, shredding ork flesh and channeling the destructive force of the explosion further down the tight tunnels. All around him, the stone was slowly being chipped away by torrents of wanton fire. Barr ignored it with singular focus, crouched over his arm mounted auspex, the fault line was just below them, a meager fifteen meters.

"Volts!" the sergeant voxed the unit's grenadier. "I need two melta charges right here!" Barr pushed himself up and quickly switched position with the grenadier. Volts set the explosives in their midst without argument, even though a stray round could vaporize them at any moment.

"Troopers, take cover! Grappling lines to the ready, on my signal, ascend as far as you can!"

The auspex put the hollow's ceiling at about nineteen meters, barely out of the melta radius. The sergeant clipped his ascension line into the motorized spooler attached to his harness and fired his anchor into the looming ceiling above. The alternative was giving up their position and charging orks at close quarters. Barr would rather take his chances with the meltas. As soon as Volts gave the thumbs up, Barr ordered the ascension.

The orks took the diminishing rate of fire as their opportunity to crush the humies, and with a resounding war cry charged the stalagmites the troopers had been hidden behind. Much to their displeasure, all they saw was boots disappearing up into the darkened recess of the natural grotto. Large caliber rounds chased the troopers as they ascended, a few troopers falling limp on their lines as they were hit by kill shots. Atop their lines the storm troopers returned fire. Theirs was far more accurate and large brutes crumbled under their fury. Ork armor was little more than heavy metal plates strapped together into some kind of form fitting garment. Few of them even bothered with it. The hellguns sliced through them and charred the thick corded flesh beneath.

One unusually curious ork stopped firing his slugga as he noticed the large canisters at his feet. He bent down to grab them when sergeant Barr's precision shot ruptured their content. The room filled with actinic light as the meltas detonated, filling the room with superheated plasma. Barr's photovisor barely had time to darken before the light erupted. He blinked the stars from his sight slowly before noticing with grim satisfaction the mounds of blackened greenskins strewn across the chamber. Below them, a large smoldering crater led down to the cavern beneath, glowing vividly at its edges.

"Descend and secure the fissure boys, I want this mission over with!" Barr watched as his assault team rapidly released their lines and disappeared down their makeshift egress point. Trooper Hua, a few meters away was looking at Barr's direction.

"Sarge, I ah… got a little problem here." Hua's voice was far too calm for what Barr considered a bit more than a 'little' problem. His legs ended a few inches below the knees, vaporized by the melta blast. The heat had cauterized the wounds perfectly, in addition to severing the limbs painlessly.

"Well gak me Hue, at least you won't bleed to death…" sighed Barr.

The trooper chuckled softly before going limp, shock overtaking his body. If they were lucky enough to be teleported out before the ork magazine blew them all to the Emperor's side, Barr made a mental note to have a talk with the idiot that ran this donkey show. That is, if the maniac hadn't died already. The idiot had elected to distract the orks in their chow hall, the place guaranteed to hold the hungriest hostiles on this rok. And the hungriest were always the biggest.

The soldiers knew the importance of their objective as they crawled along the devastated coast of the erstwhile crystal shores. They had paddles their makeshift rafts all night to reach the shore under the cover of darkness. This mission, the latest in a long line of suicidal operations, was the only thing that stood between them and the death of those precious few souls who had survived this long.

They quickly dragged their rafts into the sparse covers of the beach's dying vegetation and moved on. They were filthy bearded wretches wearing the memory of once proud uniforms. Starved, mad eyed men clutching desperately maintained weapons of war. They hailed from Ranok, Persephony, and Galva. Once, some of them had even come from Pangea, but those fierce souls had long ago given their lives so that these survivors could continue to wage war upon the hated xeno.

The rag tag force now inched meter by meter to the once stately headquarters where their war had once been directed. This had been during another life. Where they had ridden powerful chimeras blessed by the priests of mars. Where they had rained death unending on their enemies from mighty basilisks. Where they had fired upon their foes with the bite of thousands of lasguns. Where they had taken to the skies on winged Valkyries.

Now, they ate little more than dirt, killed with rusted knives, hid from foes unending, and took to the skies only once the Emperor beckoned them. What little firepower they once possessed was gripped tight in these soldiers' hands. Focal lenses wrapped in cloth to protect them from the grit that blunted them. Laspacks charged painstakingly with the heat of hidden fire pits. Armors long ago fallen to pieces due to ware and the numerous skirmishes with the enemy.

These were the last of the Emperor's imperial guard on Kursk. A million had become a thousand, then hundreds, and now dozens. The fate of even those few now rested in the hands of these six soldiers. The skies had been lit with fiery tongues. Debris the likes of which had not been seen in years were disintegrating in Kursk's atmosphere. A void battle was taking place somewhere in the heavens. Hope, so brittle and abused of, reared its head and begged to be heard. Had the Imperium returned? Why now, after these long years? More likely the battle was a passing engagement and if so, the imperial ships would soon leave. These men would then wither and die away, forgotten.

That is, unless the survivors could let them know they existed. Hope rested upon the starved shoulders of these few soldiers who could still fight. On the few who could reach the headquarters at crystal shores and operate the ground-to-orbit vox transmitter. A cry for help. A cry of hope. A cry for war.

The orks had plundered every single inch of the human held peninsula years ago. But they did not take what they could not use. It was possible the transmission tower would still stand. It would be bereft of anything capable of sending a signal, but it would hopefully stand. The last functional company vox set was strapped to one of the soldiers back. All they needed was to reach the tower controls in the subterranean bunker.

The fire of hope flickered dangerously when the soldiers finally crawled off the beach. Bonfires were lit across the perimeter of the HQ. Gretchin wandered about while the heftier greenskins slept off the worst of their promethium brew's effect. It was a disorganized mob, but it was resistance, and the soldiers could ill afford it. Worried glances spread across the soldiers. Their ruddy face had long been creased with the ochre dust of Kursk, eyes blood shot and beard streaked with reddish strands. Still, a vivid flame burned in their eyes. It said: salvation, or death.

The ragtag force unlimbered cruel makeshift knives and shivs, agreed wordlessly, and began to approach the HQ. They had learned stealth and survival from the Galvan scouts, fortification and demolition from the Ranok engineers, relentless assault from the Pangean death-worlders, and used it all with the speed of the Persephonian light cavalry. They bore the memories of all those worlds, and struck with vengeance for all those who had fallen away from home.

Like shadows they materialized between the bonfires and set to work. Gretchin panicked as they were eviscerated, rent in twine, or stabbed repetitively. Their shrieks and cries muffled by shredded cloaks or loose rags. A ragged snort erupted from a waking ork deemed unworthy of sleeping indoors. He looked about sleepily and cursed as he noticed an unsurprising lack of sentries. Hawking a slimy glob of mucous he rolled over and went back sleep, still painfully intoxicated. The ork grumbled, dreaming of the punishment he would visit on the puny grots.

From discarded rubbish piles, crouched behind roaring bonfires, or stepping out of shadowy recesses, the soldiers appeared once more and quickly entered the once stately HQ. Broken windows and unsecured doors all that stood in their way. The sentries had failed, no shot had been fired, and they were closer to their objective than ever.

They flitted through the corridors, cloth wrapped feet silent against the once pristine marble flooring. They were half way to the bunker lift when the sun crested the horizon and woke an ork task master, who now roared for the day to begin. The soldiers disappeared behind fluted columns, shredded banners, and ravaged furniture. The orks had not yet woken fully and thrashed about without noticing the humans in their midst, but it was only a matter of time. A grimy Ranok brute gripped his lasgun tightly and exchanged glances with his compatriot.

Pangean doctrine came to him as if he had been born one of the death worlders. Strike fast, create confusion, stay mobile, and wake to the great warrior's side. The soldier's leader shook his head slowly. He had lost too many friends already, they would live or die together. The Ranok disagreed and snapped his cognomen tags from his neck, with the flick of his wrist they landed in the leader's dirty hands.

With a mighty roar the soldier darted from his hiding place and blazed away at the slumbering giants. He ripped the last of his grenades from his harness and threw it in a packed room before firing his las gun dry into another. In seconds, the orks were up and chasing him, moving away from his comrades. The worn soldiers spared him no further thought. His sacrifice would be used to take the objective. They would mourn his valiant soul only if they had the luxury of surviving.

They rapidly formed behind each other, a sinuous line of hunched soldiers covering one another as they passed room after room. Well placed shots silenced curious gretchin or blinded roaring orks. The enemy knew they were here now, they had to move more rapidly than stealth allowed, but they could still slow the enemy's response by creating more pressing concerns.

A wiry Galvan split from the group once he saw a stockpile room filled with crude promethium and ammo crates. The orks were not known for their safety procedures, they would often simply pile their supplies up in the most convenient of places. It made for spectacular diversions. With a few quick shots the room exploded into a fiery blaze. The Galvan barely made it out before the torrential blaze spread out into the corridors. That would buy them some time.

The persephonians were holding the corridor which held the lift. While their rear had been secured, the front still needed tending to. Their leader was waving the vox man down the lift shaft when the firing started. The wiry Galvan darted for cover as the corridor filled with large caliber rounds. He crumbled lifelessly, his headless body smashing against the priceless bust of their former commander. Their leader spared his fallen comrade a glance, spitting when he saw the noble features of their hated general staring back at him in a pool of the Galvan's blood.

The three remaining Persephonians worked together to knock the orks to the ground with their coordinated las fire. They barely managed to slow the enemy assault. In seconds, more of them would mass and no amount of las fire the soldiers could muster would hold them back.

Their leader called them over to the line that was hooked in the lift's shaft for a quick descent. He covered them as fire ripped at his surroundings, pulverizing stone and wood. His men followed his command immediately, he had earn their trust a long time ago. They descended into the dark shaft as quickly as they were able to. The roar of frenzied orks followed the soldiers' leader down as he crashed into the rumble at the shaft's bottom. His brothers-in-arms quickly dragged him out and pulled him aside as the last of their demolition charges was used to collapse the shaft into rubble. As the dust blew into the confines of the abandoned command bunker, the soldiers stab lights panned the darkness for enemies. They coughed as the dust crept into their tired lungs. Years of Kursk's fine particulates had already claimed many of their fellows. At times like these, breathing often felt like razors slicing through their chest. It didn't stop the most feral of their numbers from glaring wolfishly at the carnage they had wrought.

The precious moments they had bought themselves by collapsing the shaft we used getting the coughing under control and getting a bearing of the room. It had been a very long time since their leader had been here. The memory pained him to this day. They found what they had been looking for, the vox station. They set to work, slicing wires and struggling to remember forgotten prayers to the machine spirit. They would need the Omnissiah's blessing now, so it paid to remember the litanies. While the men worked, their leader skirted the edges of the bunker, hands brushing against the walls until he found the emergency power supply. With closed eyes and a prayer on his lips, he flipped the lever. A soft hum thrummed across the room but died moments after a shower of sparks fell from the ceiling. Then, slowly, a few lumen strips came to life and the humming grew strong again. The soldiers looked around the bunker, faces that had forgotten to smile slowly remembering. They shared no words between them, they didn't need to. Everything they had needed to share had already been said long ago. Quickly, they finished their work.

They gathered around the vox console and parted as the man they had come to trust with their lives flipped a few switches. He looked across the console unsure. Nothing happened. The vox man crept closer and fiddled with a few of the switches until finally the blessed sound of static filled the room. An echo of the once handsome man's mirthful grin showing through the filth on his face. Their leader picked up the vox horn and turned all the dials to their maximum output. Every channel. Every wave. Everywhere.

With wavering fingers and tears to his eyes he pressed the transmission stud. He began to speak but choked on his words. A waif of a man, the soldier with the wandering eye, padded his back reassuringly. Hope would live or die within the span of the next few moments. It was almost unbearable.

"This is Augustus Trevin… Veteran sergeant of the Persephonian 1st mechanized infantry regiment, 3rd Company, Misfit squad. If there is anyone out there. Please, for throne's sake, please respond." The static returned as he depressed the stud. A blanket of empty noise washing over the silent room. The dying power reserve was slowly petering off.

"To any imperial ship orbiting Kursk. We are in need of help. A camp of loyalist still fight the orks. We are still alive. This is the only transmission we will be able to broad cast. Please, in the name of the Emperor, is _ANYONE_ out there?"

The lumen strips above them died one after the other. They were trapped beneath the HQ and the air would soon run out. They had hours at best. Was this going to be how their struggle ended, or would the orks get in before their lungs gave out?

The signal had been strong. The tower was still functional. The vox caster at their feet was communing as it should. Still, nothing but cold dead static met them, and even that died moments later. And hope, it seemed, had finally died with it.

Sigismund was no stranger to constraining timetables, but this was verging on the ridiculous. The battle in orbit had lasted little more than an hour and the storm troopers had cleared the static weapons platform in record time. Sigismund had teleported straight in the middle of an ork feast armed with little more than his ancestral wargear, a legatus pattern power armor, and the support of a handful of heavy flamer wielding armsmen. With the knightly Keever watching his back, the diversionary attack had been all too successful, drawing a veritable horde of heavily armed nobs. They had held out long enough to roast half the orks on the platform, though it had cost him most of his squad.

Meanwhile, Eloquell had managed to receive a dying vox signal from the surface. It had died moments after its initial broadcast. By a stroke of luck, the man they had come to save had sent it but its point of origin was swarming with orks. The auspex sweep of the surface had been grim. _Everything,_ was crawling with orks. Sigismund had less than an hour to get the soldiers out before their position, and his in orbit, was overtaken by ork reinforcement.

Every available lighter had been scrambled to descend to the surface. Half were packed with armsmen, a full company's worth, the others were held in reserve to ferry the marooned guardsmen. Still, the prospect of a successful rescue mission were slim.

They arrived on wings of fire and death, unloading into the jaws of waiting xenos. Luckily the abandoned imperial HQ only held a handful of orks, and they had become complacent without a worthy foe. They were cut down with only a few casualties to Sigismund's forces. It had been a brutal exchange of shotgun and shoota slugs, and the captain had dispatched the ork Mek Boy that lead them with the help of his powered gladius and masterwork storm bolter. The problem had not been the landing, but rather the retrieval.

It had taken time, too much of the precious commodity, to find the four soldiers buried deep within the HQ's bowels. The starved bastards had even put up a fight before realizing their rescuers weren't orks. Now, Sigismund's land forces were returning to their transport with a cloud of orkish transport barreling towards them from the horizon. An unhappy pilot, Levi Toth himself, Sigismund realized, glared at the captain from his seat in the cock pit as he helped the wounded Trevin unto his shuttle.

"We can't leave," gasped the weakened guardsmen as Sigismund strapped him to his seat.

"We can, and we will, trooper." The captain waved at Toth to take off. The brisk lift off nearly flooring the unseated Sigismund. It seemed Toth was still angry at him.

"There are more of us by the northern shore. The caverns in the mountains, we need to get to the camp." The sergeant might have been starved, but he was not beaten. The steel of his resolve struck Sigismund. The dirt encrusted guardsmen white knuckled his grav harness, remaining conscious by sheer dint of will. Sigismund couldn't help but respect that.

"In less than…" The captain looked at his chrono for added effect, "twenty-five minutes standard, a considerable force or ork ships will crowd the orbit of this miserable planet. This will force my ship to break off and abandon us. Do you want to be marooned here for another decade?"

The soldier's iron will chipped at the thought. Had it truly been a decade since that fateful day? Could he find it in himself to live one more day on this hellish world?

"We live or die together…" Trevin insisted and the cold fire that crept into the soldier's eyes told Sigismund all he needed to know.

"I'm going to kill him" hissed Evangeline as she dug her nails into the command throne's arms.

Sigismund was running late. The _Semper Fidelis_ had remained around Kursk for as long as it could. Then, a pack of Ork attack ships had forced it to power off. Lagging behind them was another kill kroozer, easily three times the size of the warship itself. This was a fight they couldn't win. Not unless they took reckless risks. Still, she couldn't very well leave her half-brother on an ork infested world. Though he made the prospect terribly tempting.

They needed to buy some time. "Master of Ordinance, what is the count on our torpedoes?" Bargest confirmed the query with his subordinates.

"Two in breach, and two on stand-by commander." The Falcion class' voss pattern launcher was half the standard size. It was only meant to add some firepower to the frigate, not take on entire fleets. Still, it could be used to good effect.

"Master of the Helm, get that planet between us and those attack ship," Ordered Evangeline. With a floury acknowledgement, the _Semper Fidelis_ headed on its new course. That would buy Sigismund twenty minutes at best. "I want those warheads primed and ready for a wide spread when we come about Kursk." The master of ordinance confirmed the order.

Only a year into her position and she was already having to command the _Semper Fidelis_ in combat. This was not only unacceptable, it was terrifying. She had no combat experience, no years of void faring to base her decision on. She was struggling not to show her panic, to ignore the sweat beading on her brow, or the urge to continuously re arrange her long navy coat's sleeves. Sigismund had left her in command while he irresponsibly meddled in everyone else's job. The bosuns' pacification of the riot, the storm troopers' rok assault, and now the pilots' rescue run. Why couldn't he sit still and captain his own damn ship!

"Is everything alright commander?" Sola asked as she appeared at the young officer's side. Evangeline had unwittingly let out a whimper, trust the vice factotum to be there to see it. The woman bunked unusually close to the captain's quarters, and had no reason to be on the bridge, but Sigismund has allowed the habit, and so there was no stopping her now. Still, her presence was often soothing. It certainly had curbed the captain's enthusiasm on a number of occasion.

"Everything is under control!" the commander said unconvincingly.

"Of course it is Evangeline. You have a fine ship, an outstanding crew, and the support of those who matter." Sola gave the young woman a reassuring wink.

Evangeline forced a smile. Sola Villaneuva was right. All she needed to do is not give ridiculous orders. Something her half-brother usually got away with, but only because they proved the right decision in the end. Sigismund wasn't half has stupid as he looked, Evangeline realized.

"What would Sigismund do?" asked the commander to herself.

"Probably charge boldly into the enemy guns blazing," kidded Sola.

"Of course, you're right!" Evangeline jumped from her seat and studied the command lectern. She deftly summoned the required information from the augury, navigation, and enginarium sections. She turned to the master of the vox, "Mistress Eloquell, the crew is at general quarters, are they not?"

"Aye, aye commander." The master of the vox answered puzzled.

"Evangeline, darling… what are you doing?" Sola stepped up to the command lectern protectively. She seemed much more concerned then she had been moments ago.

"I'm doing what Sigismund would have done!" the commander grinned wickedly. As if warned by instincts honed by years of service under Sigismund, the command crew slowly turned to the command station, and a visibly blanching vice factotum.

It had taken more than an hour. The sick, the wounded, and the dying, no one was left behind. No one would ever be left behind again. The lighters had been filled to the brink. Even the furious Toth had stepped form his beloved shuttled and ferried the skeletal survivors to its safety. The survivors had cried, praised the Emperor, and dragged what little they owned with them. Momentos of lost loved ones, lucky bolt shells, gnarled lasguns, prized tools, even the scoured and sanctified skulls of their venerated commanders. These were people who had clung to their Imperium even after being abandoned by it. These, were heroes.

Sigismund argued with a young woman on the shuttle's ship to ship vox set. It seemed his ship was under attack, and the women vehemently insisted he leave the surface. The captain would not relent. Trevin stood silently behind him as the man closed the signal on the shrieking woman.

"Oh, sergeant, I didn't hear you there." The captain straightened up and rested his hands on his hips. Gus had seen the likes a thousand times before. He himself had practiced it in the looking glass of his noble estate, so long ago. The captain wore it well, genuinely even. The indomitable spirit of the imperium made manifest.

"It's been useful around here, not being heard." Trevin tried to smile, it came off as a crooked sneer. "Why are you putting your people in danger? It's been…" the sergeant looked at his dirty wrist where a chrono might have sat, "more than twenty-five minutes standard."

Sigismund chuckled honestly, his warm smile making Gus immediately comfortable in his presence. "Birds of a feather Trevin, that's what we are." With a sweep of a grit stained sleeve, the captain invited Trevin to sit down. His richly appointed coat and tricorn suffering visibly in the dusty wasteland of Kursk. Trevin took a seat.

"I respect you and what you stand for. I believe you're worth it. You're a man who has walked a thousand miles through hell. When asked to do it again, you were willing to do so for the sake of your friends. That kind of spirit merits assistance, and it tells me one of two things."

"That I'm insane?" suggested the worn sergeant.

Sigismund smiled. "That's always a possibility, but I have seen plenty of insanity in my life time. I like to believe I can tell the difference. No, it tells me that either you are a person of immeasurable character, or that your friends are. The emperor smiles when the situation involves both."

The shaggy sergeant nodded softly, unsure of what the rogue trader was getting at.

"Why do you think I am here, on Kursk?" offered Sigismund.

"I would wager luck? Perhaps an imperial navy contract? I heard your kind like to tempt fate. Did they pay you well?"

"Luck, money, and a propensity to test fate are certainly part of why I am here. More importantly, Augustus Trevin of Persephonia, I am here because someone believed you were a person of unique character. And I agree with her."

"Her?" asked the curious guardsman.

"Lady Josephine Della. She offered me the entirety of her estate for the retrieval of any and all survivors marooned on this miserable dust ball." Sigismund leaned in conspiratorially, "and between you and me, Trevin, she asked for you by name."

The tired soldier leaned back into his grav-harness as the shuttle ramp closed. The confines were filled with the stench of his fellow survivors. Their rescue had not quite sunk in yet and numbness was slowly creeping into his system. Like many here, he let himself dream of hope once again, but not just of survival. He hoped for a reunion that promised answers to questions which boggled his mind. The first being, why had his commanding officer intervened at such high personal cost? And what could it mean?

Beside Trevin, Sigismund turned his mind to more pressing concerns. The _Semper Fidelis_ was running circles around the planet, fending off the ork reinforcements and taking heavy fire. He would have to somehow get his lighters to dock without leaving his ship vulnerable to concerted attack. Face down his furious half-sister who, in an uncharacteristically candid moment, promised to do unseemly things to his corpse. Then, fire up the auxiliary plasma banks to give his ship the extra thrust it needed to escape the hostile ships circling it. Under normal conditions firing up the auxiliary generators would not have been such a risky task, but the ship had taken a few hits and the plasma banks were as likely to explode as give them the edge they needed. Finally, he would need a way out of the system. Their initial augury sweeps, in addition to their warp transit, had no doubt attracted a horde of ork ships to the galactic east, which left them with only one option. They would have to brave the Beholder's mysterious nature, the only ork free space in the system, if they had any chance of escaping their pursuers.

The _Semper Fidelis_ was limping along. At this rate, the Della family fortune would barely be enough to pay for the months it would take to dry dock the warship and affect its much needed repairs. Not to mention the amount of ordinance they had flung at the orks, yet another well documented cost Sigismund would have to account for. Sola had made it painfully clear in the many paged volume she called a fiscal repot. The cost in human life had been the last nail in the coffin, and the one Sigismund care the most about. This endeavor would be considered a miserable failure in the eyes of the dynasty senatorum. That is, if they ever made it back to the flotilla to submit their report. There was still half of dozen ork ships of all shapes and sizes sniffing at their reactor's radiation trail. Foot prints in the void mused Sigismund.

Surprisingly, Evangeline had performed admirably given her situation. Taking a page out of his book, she had used Kursk's orbit to sling shot her way towards the unprepared ork attack ships. With full thrust and lucky shots, she had barged through their line, destroying one with plasma warheads and trusting the ship's shields to hold up against the enemy's barrages. She had crippled the two remaining attack ships by slicing between them and unleashing all of the _Semper Fidelis_'s wrath at once. Then, easily outmaneuvering them, she had pressed on and used the last of their torpedo load against the kill kroozer. Forced out of its heading to avoid the lethal payload, the ship had swung out of firing range and allowed the imperial warship enough time to reach the pickup coordinates. The lighter pilots had matched speed and dock with admirable skill. Toth especially, had managed to land without crashing in the hangers. It had all been brilliant, despite incurring several hull breaches and venting out nearly a third of the crew to their deaths, in addition to crippling the port side battery and damaging several vital systems.

Steward Herbert had managed to compile an approximate viability report. The _Semper Fidelis_ barely had two months' worth of breathable gases, drinkable water, and foodstuff. A figure only possible in conjunction with the devastating attrition of the crew. So far from safe harbor, and far too deep in the Kursk system to safely jump to warp without ripping the ship in half, a slow agonizing death was the most probable outcome. One the crew at large had no real idea of, thanks to the skillful propaganda campaign by Eloquell and her people.

And so the _Semper Fidelis_ limped on towards the mysterious xeno construct that centuries of void tales had characterized ascertain doom. Now that half the system was alerted to the imperial warship's existence, it seemed reasonable to use the long distance auspex to get an idea of what the Beholder was. Only rudimentary readings were obtained. The perfectly spherical planetoid was surrounded by eight equally unlikely satellites. They circled around at perfectly equidistant intervals, and swallowed most kind of augury probes sent their way. A mystery in every sense. Whatever horrors the alien minds which had conceived it reserved for the rogue trader and his crew, only time would tell. It held the promise of an uncertain fate, whose alternative was all too knowable and bloody. Either way, it was death at xeno hands.

Sigismund had run out of time. Every day the causalities from the auxiliary plasma bank section rose, the over worked system failing in catastrophic gouts of superheated gas. The Enginseer Primaris, Scartus, had already warned the captain that the strain was jeopardizing the main drive reactor. It was only a matter of time before the magos considered Sigismund's demands a heresy to the machine-spirit and came up from the bowels of the ship to take the captain's head. To the Adeptus Mechanicus, a void ship in its entirety, let alone the reactor it housed, was sacrosanct. They lived to serve and tend its colossal heart. Scartus had once already made good on his threats some 200 years ago, decapitating a great-grand-uncle with his servo arm. It seemed that venerable tech-priests were more valuable than incompetent family relations, for the enginseer had never been punished. A sobering reminder of a captain's limits, of lines drawn in the sand.

Sigismund prayed the ship would reach the Beholder, before he had to test those lines.


	3. Chapter 3

Into the Breach; final part

Some information was too sensitive to divulge. Even if Sigismund trusted his command staff implicitly, it would complicate their duties tremendously to silence every dissenting voice they encountered. No, the state of affairs required a lighter touch, the kind the inner circle had. Twenty-seven hours ago the _Semper Fidelis_ had finally broken free of its pursuers. Despite the masterful skill of its crew, credit went to the Beholder. The orks knew better than to enter the space around it and the _Semper Fidelis_ had soon found why. The ship now floated inexorably towards the spherical planetoid powerlessly. Seconds after the fifty thousand kilometer mark, a dissonant frequency had disturbed the harmonics of the exhausted drive reactor. Through a miracle of the Omnissiah, Scartus had managed to enact a successful rite of slumber and lulled the fissuring reactor. But a slumbering core also brought about a slumbering ship, its power draining away quicker than the residual charge could maintain it.

Hidden away from prying eyes Sigismund, Sola, Hubert, and Remi met in the captain's dimly lit quarters. As the power needed rationing, all none essential lighting had been curtailed to a strict minimum. Candle light flickered between them on a dining table too large for their use, its rich hand carved curves the only ostentatious display visible in the gloom. The mood was heavy and ponderous, a decisive resolution was required for their continued survival. Summoned with uncharacteristic subtility on the captain's part, Sola had expected something else entirely than what she found.

A shame, for the vice factotum had chosen a dress superbly appointed to heighten her lithe figure, its deep velvet folds hinting teasingly at her body's shapes. Although she knew of the captain's licentious tendencies and harbored no desire to be one of his conquest, she understood the importance of playing ones strengths.

The Nostromo navigator hadn't bothered to alter his garments in the slightest. His every day robes of office were worth a king's ransom, and was in fact permanently overdressed. The lack of illumination deepened the shadows that masked his hooded face to the extent that his robes appeared to be unoccupied. Few would have guessed that the regal display was as armored as a guard issue flak vest, for it had been weaved with crystalline fibers spun by a race of sentient microscopic arachnids. That particular xeno race's continued existence had been tolerated by the Imperium, not unlike certain species of abhumans, or mutants, for that matter. The navigator being a prime example and the transhuman space marines another. The saying 'Thou shall not suffer the alien, the mutant, and the witch to live' prove to be far more flexible a statement than presupposed.

Sigismund's naval uniform seemed remarkably subdued in comparison to his guests. The captain enjoyed putting on airs, but this occasion was not one of them. As the ship steward poured a measure of golden liquor in each of the guests' glass, Sigismund sighed deeply.

"What exactly is this thing?" he finally asked.

Sola accessed her encyclopedic memory, long enhanced by the cerebral cogitator that nestled within her skull. It held an unfathomable depth of knowledge and was usually filled with invaluable information, none of which could answer the captain's question. Instead, she reverted to the ship's choirmaster's report.

"Venerable Potholemus has informed us that we have entered a zone of silence. In his long and loyal career aboard the ship, he has never once encountered such a phenomenon. He claims the voices of his peers do not reach here, and he can similarly not project his own within the grasp of the anomaly."

Remi scoffed. "Never trust a psyker. They are barely more than soothsayer on the best of days, hiding their incompetency behind parables and mysticism." Remi reached for his fluted glass and sipped the expensive amasec, grimacing under his hood at its crude flavor. His palette was used to much finer fare. He set the glass down in a sinuous motion, the fluid gesture disturbing to behold.

"As oppose to how you practice your craft, locked away in your spire?" Said Sigismund.

"You amuse me Sigs," chuckled the Nostromo. "There is a distinct difference between our age old craft and their pathetic attempts at screaming into the warp. We are not followed about by spy-blanker executioners, unlike those supposedly sanctioned telepaths, we are not prone to possession or devilry."

The difference was academic, they all knew. But navigators would rather be caught dead than be compared to warp meddling witches, especially Remi. Sigismund rubbed his brow.

"Then what is your appraisal of the situation?" asked the captain apprehensively.

A slight shift under the cowl was the only sign that Remi had heard the question at all, taking his time before answering. "It is most likely an artificially produced lull in the warp, a diversion of its currents. Though such a thing is beyond imperial technology, its xeno creators undoubtedly managed it. How they managed is puzzling, not to mention very, very interesting."

The guests silently considered the implication of such a feat, and the species that could have managed it. Sola had been born on a forge world of the Adeptus Mechanicus and the teachings of the Omnissiah. Which made her superficially familiar with many of the priesthood of mars' theories about the material universe. Many of which she had explored by herself with the help of pilfered tomes acquired by the dynasty. Purist would have called her a tech-heretic, an unsanctioned holder of ancient technological mysteries reserved to the priesthood, and despite this, she still could not imagine how the warp could be repelled from the material plane on such a scale. This went far beyond the capacity of Gellar shield technology. Hubert coughed politely.

"I remember a time long ago when your father and I had ventured deep into xeno ruins found in the Heathen Stars of the Koronus expanse, a time before you were even born sir. Anthonid was still unwed, having yet to meet your mother, Siggy." The old man smiled nostalgically, forgetting his normally formal conduct. Those had been the days before the schism between him and Anthonid, when they had been like brothers.

Remi chuckled at yet another pet name he could harass Sigismund with, a thought the captain realized as he shot the navigator a murderous glare.

"Anyway, we found these marvelous regenerating crystals. Stranger yet, the crystals were alive. Veritable colonies of the things grew in the ruins, a psychic network of billions. We discovered that with a telepathic nudge, their growth could be directed into any shape you could imagine. Better yet, they would continuously regenerate and survived off ambient radiation, nothing serious mind you, just heat, light, that sort of thing. They were for all intent and purpose, the perfect building material."

Hubert stroked his groomed beard with a gnarled hand. Dragging the silence until Sola couldn't help but urge the conclusion of the mysterious tale. Her curiosity often got the better of her manners. "And?" she asked the steward.

"Ah, well, unfortunately the crystal colonies had a mind of their own, one that care little for our plans. Before a proper mining operation could be establish a hostile vessel attacked the _Son of Ultramar_"

"Wait, a ship? Whose?" The captain piped in. Hubert smiled. He had known the relatively young captain his entire life, he had practically raised the boy after his father had sent him onto the _Semper Fidelis _to learn the craft of command. The boy had barely been five years old. Void battles were still his favorite kind of stories.

"The crystals of course. I told you they were part of a psychic network didn't I? Well, they had fashion a semblance of ship out in the void long before we ever arrived, probably taking to the stars to explore, just as man had. It fired slivers of itself to deadly effect. Once Anthonid had laid the ship to waste with the orbital bombardment cannons of his prow, he reconsidered selling the Imperium a construction material capable of murdering its owners."

The inner circle shared glances, the galaxy was truly a formidable and inhospitable place. A reality far too familiar for Remi. A reality he would rather see robbed of any power it could exert over him.

The Nostromo banished the story with a scoff. "A very fanciful tale steward. Are those the kind of stories you would use to scare Siggy when he misbehaved? Or was this the kind of rubbish that made the man into the fool he is today?"

The ship's steward met the Nostromo's eyes, despite the shadows that hung beneath his hood, the harrowing glare unsettling the mutant. "Banish the thought from your mind young navigator, this was not a tale, but an account. Your posturing is just that, feeble attempts to paint yourself mighty because you fear yourself to be weak. There are creatures in the dark void that would rip your sanity to shred, despite your inherit resilience to the maddening warp. Creatures the likes of which could subjugate the crystal colonies we had found, creatures like the Yu'vath."

Remi disregarded the old man, but couldn't help feeling a flutter in his chest. House Nostromo had been amongst the navigators assisting the Angevine crusades, which had banished the Yu'vath from what would become the Calaxis sector two millennia later. House records remained of the boundless and terrible mastery over the warp that the species had possessed. Enough to know that such mythical creatures had indeed existed. And though they had dragged their entire empire into the warp to disappear forever on the cusp of their defeat, their slave races numbered in the hundreds, each were more terrifying than the last. Some of which still survived to this day.

Sola shook her head. "Calm within the warp, self-replicating crystalline structures, Yu'vath? How does this all fit together?"

Sigismund stood and fetched his brocaded navy coat from his high backed dinning chair. "It is all supposition until we set foot in that construct. Thank you Hubert, your council was invaluable."

Sola quickly stood, smoothing the pleats of her dress in a nervous tell. "You can't possibly want to go there in person Sigs." She feared for the captain's safety but the exhilaration she felt reminded her that perhaps it was her curiosity above all that drove her to say what she did next." Not without me!"

"I intend to Sola. In less than twenty-four hours the atmospheric vitae systems will go unpowered and we will all die. Those left on this boat trust me to do whatever is in my power to safeguard their lives. I don't need to endanger you to do that, I have knuckles after all." Before the captain could storm off, Remi chimed in.

"I suppose I will have to join you on this fool's errand. Sola won't take no for an answer and you would be lost without me. You'd probably run in circles until the Emperor rose from his golden throne. Perhaps with my warp expertise, Sola's penchant for technology, and Knuckles' brute strength, we might succeed."

Sigismund couldn't have asked for fiercer companions. Hopefully, their trust would not be misplaced. Finally, the elderly Hubert painfully pushed himself from his chair.

"Once last thing sir. I believe it's appropriate to mention that a message came to me by way of chief bosun Ribella. It seems that, being denied the means to contact you directly, the imperial guard survivors have offered their services towards the resolution of what ills their swift return home."

"Hardy bastards," smiled the captain. "Invite them to the lighter bay Hubert, I'll join them presently." The odds were looking better by the minute. If Sigismund had been a gambling man, which he had to admit he was, he'd have taken these odds any day. It was time to roll the dice.

Sigismund stood before the men assembled in the lightless lighter bay. He cut a regal figure clad in the light power armor, bestowed to the defender of the dynasty. Its sculpted breastplate was worked into the perfection of the human body. Its braces and grieves mimicking the musculature of the apex warrior, a modest sun tanned cingulum covering the gaps between the breast plate and thigh guards with adamantium studded leather strips. With his helm resting in the crook of his arm, the ancient pattern molded to mimic those worn by the ancient warriors of holy terra itself, he nodded at the soldiers that would soon risk their lives with him.

Ratings had set up enough lumen globes to shed light on the mustering point, and rows of void suited armsmen bearing shotguns and boarding gear now waited their commander's briefing. The captain found the guardsmen easily enough. Although they wore the same protective suits as his soldiers, they projected an air of stoic competence with none of the discipline or ceremony shared by the void born naval crew. None the less, he was thankful for their support. Sigismund hated admitting to himself that the storm trooper company was too valuable an asset to risk in such a risky operation. He consoled himself with the knowledge that whatever these brave men would encounter, he would be at their side, taking the same risks.

With Remi and Sola at his side, both with their own personalized void gear, he began the briefing. "The _Semper Fidelis_ is in her death throes. Her beating heart slowing as we speak. She is stricken and vulnerable, but she is not defenseless. Many of you were born within her halls, you have lived from her bounty and called her home, and if any of you are lucky enough, you will die in her service like your fathers and forefathers have before you. Her decks are sacrosanct, every inch of her is Imperial soil! Her fate is in your hands, will you let the xeno trample upon he decks?"

"Never!" the armsmen roared, punching their fists in the air.

"Will you let her millennia of service end in this miserable system?"

"Never!" they roared again.

"Will you risk life and limb with me to repay her protection, to hear her cannons roar anew, and watch her carve her way through xenos filth, that mankind may rule the stars as is its manifest destiny!"

The armsmen began beating their fists against their chest in a rhythmic tattoo, the lighter bay crew joining in the martial tradition, only the Kursk survivors were unmoved. These traditions were not their own. They originated from a naval life with a history of its own. The ship a nation in its own right. From the cadence of their walk, to the clip speech of their low gothic, and the professions of their daily lives, these people were fundamentally different. Their world an artifice of man, with recycled air and water, illuminated by phosphorous lights, and steel plates beneath their boots. The captain's words was meant for them.

Sigismund raised his hand and silence fell. "Your mission is to infiltrate three of the satellites orbiting the Beholder, designated Alpha, Beta, and Cappa. Ascertain the nature and function of these moons and disable anything that might be the source of the harmonics plaguing our reactor core." The captain began walking along the lines of the assembled armsmen. "The moons are covered in a matrix of crystalline armor. The wrecks floating around the anomaly are ork remnants, we believe the greenskins fell prey to the same problems the_ Semper Fidelis_ is experiencing and attempted to destroy the moons. They breached the crystalline surface but failed to free themselves of the Beholder's grasp. These are the entry points your pilots will use to get you aboard." Taking a deep breath, Sigismund eyed the men within their sealed void carapaces.

"We have reason to believe these crystalline shells are self-repairing, that leaves us with a small window of opportunity. Additionally, radiation seem to be venting from the damaged moons so I expect anyone with a suit breach to return to their shuttle. You won't survive more than a few minutes I'm told." Sola nodded to Sigismund as he confirmed her appraisal. "There is no need for heroics." Sigismund flashed a confident smile, "that, you can leave that to me."

The armsmen received the jest well, chuckling at their captain's reputation.

"The radiation will also play havoc on your vox range, so relay any reports to your shuttles and they will forward them to mistress Eloquell." The captain stopped and gave them an approving nod. "Now, if you're all done watching me prance about, mount up!"

The boarding teams filed out, grabbing their equipment on the way towards their shuttles. With a passing salute, the Kursk survivors went their own way. Sigismund returned a thankful nod and waited for everyone to be within their transport before approaching his own. Sola and Remi were patiently standing on the boarding ramp as their support settled into their grav couches.

Sigismund clamped his helmet into the suits atmospheric seals and opened an internal vox channel. "You can come out now Knuckles." From one of the many entrances onto the embarkation deck, a large shaped shambled out. The ork had insisted he make his own void suit, as none could contain his bulk. It was little more than industrial overalls with led slabs bolted into the substructure hidden beneath its material. Upgraded with jagged sharps of steel and plastered in strange orkish glyphs, it boasted a large plasteel bowl atop its armored collar. Breathable gases were pumped into the suit by ribbed tubing coming out of a repurposed heavy flamer tank. Dials and valves were stitched crudely across the orks void suit, their use suspicious devoid of purpose, but Knuckles confidently boasted it would 'get thingz dun.'

"Whyz I gotta wait outside, huh?" grumbled the bulky greenskin in his home made vox thief. How any of his equipment worked was a mystery, one Knuckles kept jealously hidden.

"I told you why, Knuckles. Our guests are not likely fond of orks and they graciously offered to help. It's the least we could do," said Sigismund. "Now mount up and try not to gouge anyone's suit while you settle in, okay?"

The ork's head bobbed in his bulbous void helmet as he thundered past the captain. The Nostromo affected an air of disgust as Knuckles barged passed him. It was one he often wore, so Sigismund thought nothing of it. As the captain boarded behind Remi, Sola squeezed his arm, the click of her vox channel following a second later.

"No heroics, Sigs. Seriously. I brought enough equipment to find the source of the anomaly but we don't know what to expect. I doubt the orks stopped trying after they pummeled the moons, they must have boarded the satellites too but something stopped them. And they are far more resilient than we are."

The captain's feature were hidden behind his visor, unlike Sola's transparent vision shield, but his voice was soothing, if a little dismissive. "I wouldn't do anything to endanger you Sola. You know that."

"It's not me I'm worried about Sigs. Promise me," Sola frowned.

Sigismund nodded and took her gloved hand in his armored gauntlet. The artifice of his wargear was such that he could squeeze her hand tenderly, despite the ceramite between them. Without wasting another word the captain made his way up to the cock pit, stowing his weapons securely.

"I curse the day I met you captain," greeted Levi Toth. Sigismund sat in the co-pilot's chair and chuckled through his external vocalizer.

"Give it time Toth, you'll find more than just that to curse me with." Signal strips were flashing on the outside of the shuttle, the lighter crew directing the shuttle taxis to their appointed take off position. The darkness beyond the lighter port was so deep that without the carefully rationed guiding strips a pilot was likely to collide against the boundaries of the embarkation deck before he ever made it out.

"None the less captain, I particularly despise you at the moment. I went from earning a decent livelihood in relative safety to one in an ork infested star system. In the short time since you forced me into your service I have already lived through a void riot and a void engagement. And now I'm preparing to land blindly into the lion's den with Emperor-knows-what in it. That's if I can get my instruments to function with all this damnable electromagnetic interference out there."

"Just like Fistae Munda's low orbit," chided the captain.

"No! It's nothing like Fista Munda." Toth complained wretchedly as he powered the forward thrust. The shuttle was slowly picking up speed as it blazed a trail from the lock harness and the thruster plates that allowed shuttles to take off in the relatively small bay. "Well, maybe a bit," the pilot admitted as he cleared the lighter port and began to turn into his heading. His instruments wobbled and danced, making no sense of direction, speed, or relative distance. The pilot sighed as Sigismund turned them off.

"Huh-huh" taunted the captain playfully.

"Fine… it's just like it." Despite having to fly blind, Toth intuitively piloted old Barnabus, easily, reacting to its well know tells. The barely audible rattling of the chassis, the stiff right maneuvering thruster, the pull in the seat of his stomach. It all made sense to Levi.

"I still hate you," muttered the surly pilot.

The short flight had tested Levi's skills. He had chased his target moon amidst wildly fluctuating gravity wells. The size of the planetoid and its revolving satellites exerted much more pull than they should have, and flying between them had clawed at his shuttle violently. With their auspex down, Levi had took his shuttle around the moon a few times to find the crater that had been blown out of its crystal shell. The landing had been another matter entirely. Synchronizing his speed with the movement of the satellite, he had manage to set down within a gouged out cavern, the retro thrusters had barely been able to arrest his descent. Shaken but not dead, the boarding team had debarked into the cavern system that riddled the moon. They had expected a zero-gee operation, but their footsteps had settled on a firm bedrock of stone untroubled.

Sola, in her Mechanicus pattern exploration suit, quickly calibrated her advanced augury equipment. Sigismund could feel the powerful radiation flooding the tunnels on his skin. Although his power armor was capable of handling void born radiation, the amount that bounced around the tunnels was entirely more potent.

"You never bring me anywhere nice, Sigs." Remi Nostromo stepped up to the captain as the boarding team established a perimeter, armed with specialized shotgun shells capable of firing in a vacuum.

"You never deserve it, Remi. Now if we could please keep the banter to a minimum, I promised Sola I'd behave." The sensorium suit within his power armor was usually quite efficient, but its returns were hashed with static and ghost returns. Even his autosenses projected a filmy grit onto his vision.

"That was your mistake, not mine." Remi took his surroundings in, the raw stone tunnels becoming smooth shafts further in. The orks had made a mess of things. "I can usually sense the currents of the warp easily enough. They were little more than lethargic eddies back on the ship. But here, they are nonexistent. We are definitely on the right track."

Yards away, Knuckles took long ponderous strides reminiscent of low-gee environments. No one seemed keen to remind him that the gravity was relatively normal. A criticism that would end badly for anyone who dared, bar perhaps the captain himself.

"Sending party auspex uploads. The data communion is achieved but the machine-spirits are disturbed by the ambient interference," announced Sola.

Slowly, icons appeared in Sigismund's helm display. Party vitals and augmented sensor range being fed to his armor's war spirit. "Confirmed, Sola." The captain waved over his team leaders. "Sergeants-at-arms take your units along these tunnels, stay within vox range if possible and report any findings. We will take the central shaft."

A chorus of affirmatives echoed along the vox network, hand torches were lit and the armsmen spread out along their designated tunnels. Sigismund, Remi, Sola, and an impatient Knuckles heading towards their own. Sola's auguries were mapping out the tunnels ahead of them. The normal range of such a powerful set would normally reach much farther, but despite their present shortcomings, they produces a wealth of data for Sola to explore.

"These readings are highly anomalous. Excluding the crystal matrix shell, the outer layers of the moon is accumulated void particulates but the further we move in the higher the ferro carbon particle count." The vice factotum panned the hand held auspex along the smooth tunnel walls. "This is impossible. The surfaces are bored smooth to the micrometer. There are patterns laced with substances of highly conductive material within these walls. Origin unknown, not to the Imperium anyway. Omnissiah preserve me!" Sola stopped in her steps, Remi and Sigismund slowing down while Knuckles plodded onwards. "Whatever this moon is made of, however the xeno built it, I know what it's for." Her companions waited as Sola's mind raced. The logic engine in her head computed thousands of possible scenario's and compared them to the wealth of knowledge the rogue trader dynasty held. She calculated the sheer mass of the moon and its structural material. "It's an amplifier, but on a massive scale."

"Doez dis thing killz stuff?" asked Knuckles absently from further in the tunnel.

"No" answered Sola, still wrestling with the data inloading her systems. "But there are eight of these satellites and they are all amplifying the harmonics emitted by the Beholder planetoid. That's what is interfering with the ship, and the warp itself. But It would just be a side effect." gasped the overwhelmed factotum.

"If youz says so," Knuckles mumbled into his vox as he reached down to grab something at his feet. "But this 'ere gits dead, so what killz him?" The ork lifted the shredded half remains of one of his kind, its meat flayed from its bones. It had been torn apart without any sign of a struggle. Whatever had killed the ork was still out there, and chances were it would find Sigismund and his crew much easier prey.

"You never bring me anywhere nice," Remi mocked again, shaking his head. Even hidden behind a darkened visor, the navigator could feel the captain's glare burrowing into him. A smile crept along his features.

Trevin's team travelled within target Beta guided by their stab lights. Kursk's survivors were unaccustomed to the gear they were carrying. Thankfully, they had not needed to use any of the overly complicated anchor lines given them. The gravity felt a little off compared to Kursk, or the ship, but it was manageable. Trooper Derrick was taking point with his borrowed shot cannon. He had volunteered to take the most dangerous position, like always. The units loader, trooper Reiner, had died on Kursk barely a week before their rescue. His withered frame succumbing to illness. Trevin had left Derrick at the camp the day they set out to vox for help, his spirit had been crushed. There was a special bond between heavy weapon crewmen and Derrick had taken Reiner's death harder than most. After being rescued, he had recovered his wits but there was now a rancor hiding in his heart. Survivor's guilt, they all carried their share.

He was followed by trooper Lancer, covering his comrade's back with a combat shotgun too clean to ever have been used. Derrick cursed and turned on the scrawny trooper behind him after having his heels stepped on for the sixth time since deployment. Trevin sighed and waved over sergeant Melot to take Lancer's place. A brief stare down between the large heavy gunner and the athletic squad leader set things straight.

Lancer settled beside Trevin apologetically, his wandering eye acting up under the stress. Gus signaled for them to take a private channel, "It's alright Freddy, you know how he's been since Reiner died." Lancer nodded sadly.

"Yeah, I know. He's about to beat Corvin's mean streak." The fidgety trooper looked at the man bringing up their rear. The wiry one eyed man had once been an excitable and violent youth. The years since then had distilled his personality to simply psychotic. Still, he was dependable enough if you knew how to handle him. Even in the dark, trooper Corvin's one good eye shinned back wolfishly at Lancer over the shoulders of the last two members to have been inducted to Misfit squad. Grenadier Dorskovy, a characteristically wide shouldered Ranok, and scout Pius, a stringy Galvan. Those two had been shuffled into the unit before Colonel Maddox had passed from the dust lung. After that, no one had successfully integrated within the cliquish brotherhood that was Misfit.

Other survivors had volunteered to help the captain of the _Semper Fidelis_ get his ship back into order. They were spread along the other two units walking parallel along the tunnels. Good men and women, though Trevin. But Misfit didn't play nice, and so the relatively small unit was on its own. The veteran sergeant led his team deeper into what his mind insisted he think of as a warren. It smacked of filthy creatures and diseased swarm, but he could shake it. The vox were pitifully ineffective and Trevin often went long minutes before getting some scrambled chatter from his other units. It could be worst, he muttered to himself. He was shaved and clean for the first time in years, not to mention well fed. Memories of the meals he had eaten on Kursk wandered into his mind unbidden. Slugs, insects, salt encrusted fishes, the blood of countless rodents, he had even been starved enough to entertained the thought of taking a bite out of an ork once.

"Gus!" waved Jensen Melot. Beckoning him closer on the squad vox channel.

Trevin patted Lancer's shoulder and moved up. Trooper Derrick and sergeant Melot had found a chamber, as unnaturally smooth and featureless as the rest of the tunnels, but far larger. A large pillar stood in the tiered room, its sections filled with large quartz like crystal outcroppings. He signaled the unit to fan out and search, a tedious task for men equipped with little more than handheld electro-torches. Before long the room began to take shape. Lancer had stumbled over some sort of large conduit, Melot had found some kind of machine altar embedded in the pillar, and Corvin had doggedly examined every crystal in the chamber, noting the blurred outlines within by the light his torch. Whatever the room was, it certainly was not their objective. It was far too small and simple to house anything capable of harming a void ship. But it was a start.

"Misfit to squads, do you read?" Trevin let a few seconds pass before repeating his query. Finally, after moving along the room towards its entrance, Trevin got a response.

"Kilo to misfit, I have you, everything alright?" The vox was filled with scratchy echoes, but it would do.

"Good to hear Junger, Misfit has located a possible secondary objective. We will secure the chamber. Get a runner to the shuttle and vox a report. We will hold until we get instructions."

A confirmation echoed through the distortion. Trevin posted his men around the tiered chamber with a good field of fire over the entrance and each other's flanks. He didn't like waiting, it always felt like giving away the initiative, but if this chamber held some kind of importance, he'd have to do just that.

Corvin was still obsessing over the crystals. He smacked his hand torch against the pristine surface a few times.

"Stop that," ordered Trevin. There was no telling what those things were but hitting them probably wouldn't help. Corvin grumbled through the vox and braced his shotgun against the crystal shard, aiming at the entrance. Every few seconds, Trevin could see him glaring suspiciously at the murky crystals.

Ivana Kloda ran through the pitch black tunnels towards the shuttle. She had once been a logistic and communication specialist in Lt. Vassimof's platoon, stationed at the curtain wall. The lack of resources and functional vox sets had long rendered her military occupation specialty defunct. Still, she had survived the fall of the wall thanks to her lover, Sergei. When the block house she and Vassimof's command squad occupied had been beset by ork, Sergei had shielded her with his body. She could still feel the shockwave of the dozens of stikk bombs which had flown through the firing slits of the rockrete bunker. Sergei's dead eyes still stared at her when she pried his corpse from on top of her. Only the timely arrival of colonel Petra, the leader of the Ranok 568th, and his counter charge had made Sergei's sacrifice anything more than a brief respite. Kloda still wondered how she had managed to survive all those long years on Kursk.

Her vox screeched into life, filling her suit with painful feedback. Kloda tried shut it off, stopping in her tracks to fiddle with the shoulder mounted receiver. She tried change channels but they were all filled with screeching interference. Giving up, she pulled out the wire feeding the vox into her suit. The dysfunctional vox had given her a splitting headache and forced her to let her shotgun rest on its carrying strap.

She cursed as the vox somehow hissed back into life, a long sibilant sound that made the hairs on the nape of her neck stand on its end. The hissing stopped and started periodically, each time seemingly closer than the last.

Her eyes widened when she realized the vox was well and truly disconnected. Instinct kicking in, she slung the shotgun back into her hand and braced it against her shoulder, her eyes panning the flickering beam of her stab light as she slowly circled herself. She couldn't find the source. Back and forth she scanned the perfectly circular tunnel, the hissing filled with an atavistic craving.

Her heart pounded into her chest, salty sweat falling from her brow into her eyes, stinging. The stab light flickered one last time before dying. Panicked welled inside her as the impossible hissing traveled the dark, airless void. She dashed madly down the tunnel berating her stab light, hitting it in her palm in the vain hope of reawakening its simple machine-spirit.

Her steps suddenly faltered as she was hurled backwards, her feet kicking in the air. Something pulled her with such force that her head smashed against the transparent faceplate of her helm. Then, like a puppet on a string, she was lifted and smashed against the tunnel's surfaces again and again. Her body bent from the impacts, shattering bones and making her spit bloody phlegm and broken teeth. She screamed in terror within the confines of her void suit, unable to see her attacker. She twisted and crawled, clawing at the tunnel's smooth floor, grasping desperately for the weapon she had lost, as her ears were filled with the hissing of escaping gases.

Unseen clawed appendages gripped her fractured helm, lifting her to grasp her arms and legs. They were guided by the same malicious intelligence that now watched as her oxygen vented from broken seals. In her final moments, Kloda was painfully aware of the radiation seeping into her void suit, of her flesh cooking, of the unbearable pain that wracked her in helpless agony. It took only short moments before her broken body violently exploded into the vacuum. The long years of her unlikely survival finally coming at an end.

Sigismund's inner circle traveled the unnatural tunnels. Sola had suggested using her equipment to track the radiation trails to their epicenter, surely the source of the amplifier would lie somewhere in its vicinity. Her trick had worked like a charm, finding the largest chamber in their travel yet.

The core of the moon was a vast hollow, its walls bristling with the xeno crystals that made up its outer shell. The room hummed with strange harmonics, low and high frequency waves bouncing along its walls and back towards the unsettling apparatus that sat at its center. An eerie luminescence shining periodically from the crystals in unsettling unison. Sigismund's sensorium suit was filling his autosense visor with overwhelming data, he shut it off with a sequence of rapid blinks. Beside him, Sola stared intently at her handheld auspex readings, seemingly able to make sense of it all. "Knuckles, guard the entrance will ya?"

"Aye boss," the hulking nob positioned himself at the mouth of the perfectly cylindrical entrance and activated his shoulder mounted search light with a twist of a dial, its blinding light easily reaching dozens of meters into the darkness. Like a child discovering a new wonder, the vice factotum hurriedly moved about the room, fascinated by the entirely impossible precision of the crystal pattern and their chiming resonance. All of which purposefully fed the xeno-tech apparatus with the crystal's symphony. Whatever was target Alpha's role as an amplifier, it would be discovered in this chamber.

Sigismund was about to order Remi to make himself useful when he noticed the navigator mouth agape, a pained expression in his eyes. "Nostromo, what is it?" he voxed privately.

"This thing is an abomination," he replied. "A thousand screams hurling pain at the void, brutalizing the warp tides into submission. What could possibly the point?" The navigator pressed his hand against his helm, wishing he could massage the throbbing ache of his furrowed brow. He stepped back and walked further away from the offending apparatus. It eased his pain only by fractions, until he stood at Knuckles' side, ignoring the ork's quizzical glances.

The mutation enabling navigators to guide ships in the empyrean depended, on some fundamental level, on the ability to feel its currents. If his description was accurate, then he no doubt suffered from the same excruciating pain that kept the warp at bay, a sort of psychic counter resonance that artificially repulsed its tides. But why was he feeling the absence now, or more precisely the negation, when moments before he had commented on the utter stillness the sea of souls. Was the construct so efficient in containing, and then project the psychic counter harmonic, without waste or spillage of any kind? What terrible xeno specie could master the laws of both materium and immaterium to this extent, was this truly the work of the mythical Yu'vath? And if so, where were they now?

Sola was still intently scrutinizing the disturbingly shaped apparatus, its twisting curves suspending orbs of glistening liquid like substances, which spiked and quivered endlessly to the unheard, yet unmistakably present harmonics. Partially inorganic machinery ticked with clockwork precision and melded with the suspiciously organic protrusions of the living crystals, unknown fluids coursing between them and the chitinous shells that covered some of its parts.

"Capt'n, you hearing dis?" the nob was tapping his bulbous domed helmet with a thick gloved finger. Sigismund cocked his head, hearing nothing on his vox. Because they were in a vacuum, Knuckles couldn't have actually heard anything other than what noise he made himself. Remi's furrowed brow convinced the captain otherwise. He walked back to the entrance of the chamber while Sola continued to take readings and samples from the xeno machine. Slowly, with every step, he could hear the faint vox signal struggling to reach him. Static and guttural sounds filtered through haphazardly. He recognized the intermittent voice of one of his sergeant-at-arms and frowned. Panicked shots could be heard over the screams, but not the message itself.

"Remi, stay with Sola and keep an eye out, you know which one." The Nostromo sneered at the casual mention of his gift. "Knuckles, come with me. We need to find out what's going on." The heavily armed duo ran off into the tunnel.

Remi sighed, trying to banish the throbbing in his head. His visor was capable of gradual depolarization. With a simple twist of a nob, he would be able to unleash his third eye's power. In his state however, he wondered if he would be able to control it.

The strange containment crystal pillars started to crack. The guardsmen looked around the chamber they had been holding, they were all cracking.

"What did you do?" cursed Trevin as he looked at sergeant Melot. The man was standing by the control pillar with a frown.

"Nothing! I swear by the throne, the runes just starting glowing by themselves, I didn't touch anything." Melot answered defensively.

"I knew it!" Corvin swore, stepping back to fire a few shots into the crystal he had been suspiciously eyeing.

"Cease fire, cease fire!" ordered Trevin. Corvin's shots had flattened against the crystal, to little effect. Whatever was happening here would probably not respond well to gratuitous fire. The veteran sergeant waves his men away, and tried to reach the other survivors, but the vox was scrambled. "Fall back, head to the shuttle, there's no use holding here without orders."

Misfit squad quickly abandoned their position, venturing into the dark tunnels once again. The runner had never returned with instructions from the _Semper Fidelis_. No other squad had voxed any update either. This mission was gakked.

The guardsmen had made it half way to the shuttle's location when the warren tunnels began to merge. With a garbled curse on the vox, Trevin saw Derrick and Pius on point knocked from their feet. The pair struggled in a tangle with jerking shapes on the ground, instinctively drawing knifes and dominating their attackers.

"Friendlies, friendlies!" voxed corporal Junger as he came running from a converging tunnel. The fool's squad mates had run into Trevin's vanguard, resulting in the tussle on the ground. The guardsmen parted slowly, knives and side arms pointed at each other until the truth sunk in.

"Junger? What's going on, why isn't anyone answering their vox?" Trevin stepped up between the two squads to make sure tempers wouldn't flare. He noticed that Junger's squad was more concerned with the direction they had come from than the guardsmen who had nearly killed them.

"Something is out there Trevin. It killed the rest of our squad. Picked them up in the dark and threw their bloodied corpses at us. We can't see it or even see what it's hitting us with. It messes with the vox, Trevin, we need to exfiltrate right gakking now!"

"Calm down corporal! Mistfit, take firing positions." Trevin pointed at the tunnel the frantic guardsmen had come from, his squad spreading out to lay down as much fire as they could if something came their way. "What happened to the runner, any orders?"

Junger shook his head. "We send Kloda but she didn't make it, we got lost in the tunnels and backtracked, that's when we found her body."

"Understood, what about Hollis' squad?" asked the veteran sergeant. Junger shrugged nervously, shock muddling his ability to think. Trevin patted his shoulder and looked him in the eye, as close as their void suits would allow. "You did good Junger, now breathe, again, breathe. It wasn't your fault. But we need to move, something might have been following Misfit too and our only chance is to make it to the extraction point." Junger nodded, understanding slowly creeping into his terrified eyes.

The corporal was beginning to calm down when he folded onto himself, as if hit by a charging grox, and ripped from Trevin's grasp. Junger's visor shattered and blew out pieces of his pulverized skull. Trevin immediately dropped low as the tunnel Misfit watched over exploded in strobing light, every weapon they had firing into the darkness. Flash after flash illuminated the empty tunnel, the guardsmen saturating the area in an attempt to suppress whatever had attacked them. Crouching beside Lancer, one of Junger's boys was thrown back as if he had been hit with a sledge hammer, his entire body jerking as he dropped from the tunnel's wall, spine broken.

"Fall back!" ordered Trevin, they were shooting at ghosts, the tunnel seemingly empty. Whatever was killing them was picking them off effortlessly, far out of reach. With practiced ease, Misfit peeled back, Lancer and Pius first, followed by Dorskovy and Melot. Corvin patted Derricks' back to let him know he was free to fall back. The heavy gunner still blazed away with the heavy shot cannon, peppering the large cylindrical tunnels. He refused to move, the entire unit leaving him behind unknowingly. Trevin stopped and pulled his squad mates past him as he saw what the gunner was shooting at. Derrick had spotted their killer, a four meter long reptilian creature clinging to the ceiling, white as snow and covered in armor plates bolted to its stone like flesh. Strange contraptions were fused to its featureless oval head, the crystals found on the moon fanning out of them. The techno-horror sinuously dodged the shot cannon's bursts, warp light coruscating from its implants, then shot cannon blew apart, throwing Derrick back.

"It's on the ceiling!" Trevin voxed as he crouched low and darted back to get his fallen weapon specialist. Shells barked over his head and slammed into the ceiling where the xeno had hidden, out of sight in the cyclopean tunnels. It hesitated, dropping down from the ceiling to put Trevin between it and the fire. It was smart, Trevin hated smart xenos.

The veteran sergeant grabbed the harness of his fallen comrade and pulled hard, turning on himself and dragging the unconscious gunner behind him. Having fought long and hard at each other's side, Misfit were well trained in the retrieval of their numbers. The squad fanned out along the curving sides of the tunnel and laid down a punishing barrage. Now back in the field of fire of the guardsmen, the many limbed reptile curled onto itself, presenting the heavy plates of its armor to the shotgun blasts. Misfit wasn't scoring a kill, but they had suppressed their enemy until Trevin had rejoined their rank.

"We got you now you ugly gakking xeno!" Corvin could be heard filling the squad vox with curses. Righteous hatred coursed in the veins of any good imperial citizen, but Corvin's was raw and malicious. He did not hate the xeno for what it stood for, he hated it for hates own sake.

Warp lightening danced across the xeno's implants and without warning, all the squads electro-torches flickered and failed.

"Flare!" bellowed Melot, red sparks igniting as they arched towards the xeno. The red light was poor substitute for the brilliance of a lumen source, but it would keep them fighting. A baleful hiss traveled into the squad's suits, the xeno psyker's tricks filling their helms with a sibilant horror that no ork had matched during the long desperate decade Misfit had fought them.

Junger's last surviving squad mate howled in unhinged fear, falling to his knees and clawing at his vox relay. As the xeno uncoiled and stretched its limbs threateningly, Misfit ran pass the shell-shocked soldier. They were all brother, forged and blooded in battle, but Misfit knew very well the signs of combat madness. Junger's boy was lost, if the man survived the day than he would doubtlessly take his own life, given the opportunity. Too many had done just that.

The squad ran down the tunnels as the techno-shaman reared in front of the sobering soldier. Slowly the beast gripped his limbs and splayed him out, its stinging spite a murderous pulse driven into the abandoned survivor's mind. With methodical cruelty the xeno twisted its prey's limbs until they popped, leaving the broken soul unable to move. Pain, fear, and madness were cut blessedly short as the xeno dropped the man on the ground and stamped on his vision shield, shattering the only protection the dying man had against the void and the all-consuming radiation. The creature watched, its alien mind relishing the futility of the man as he struggled vainly against his end.

The indulgence had given Trevin's squad an all too brief respite. Again, the hateful hissing filled their vox as they burst out of the tunnels and ran for the shuttle, Derrick slung over Dorskovy's burly shoulders. Trooper Hollis and his squad waited by one of its unopened side hatch. The Persephonian born chimera driver swept his arms above his head to signal Trevin's mob. He only stopped once the pallid reptilian hunter vaulted from the tunnel's lip behind them. Hollis and his boys shouldered their weapons and began covering Misfit's desperate escape.

The xeno reared from its six limbed sprint and angrily flailed as shells that found their mark. Its cranial implants flared anew, crystals throbbing with warp light as invisible blasts of telekinetic energy smashed into Hollis and his unit. One poor sod was flung so far he slipped from the moons strange gravity, floating away into the void.

The xeno spun angrily over itself, too many prey for it to kill alone, and disappeared into the darkened tunnels before the guardsmen could mass enough fire to kill it.

"What in saint Equestria's name was that thing?" Hollis asked as Trevin's unit reached the shuttle.

"I have no idea but I don't plan on find out. We are all that's left." Huffed Trevin, the suit's oxygen incapable of feeding his ravaged lungs. Again, the soldier was reminded of his hell on Kursk as he taste the blood that sputtered from his lungs onto his lips.

"Get that hatch open and let's bang out of this miserable rock" Trevin forcibly suggested. Hollis shook his head.

"We tried, but the frakking pilot isn't responding to the vox and the shuttles locked tight."

Trevin cursed, watching the tunnel's entrance fearfully. "Just another day in the guard, heh Hollis."

Despite himself, the squad leader chuckled. "Tell that to Ygna, he's screaming bloody murder on our vox channel. Hollis looked into the star lit darkness beyond the moon's surface, a small shape still tumbling head over heels.

"Remi," Sola beckoned from the xeno apparatus, "Come take a closer look." The navigator twisted at the waist, observing the vice factotum's proximity to the hated machine.

"If it is all the same to you Sola dear, I would rather not." The captain and Knuckles had been gone only a few minutes when Sola had finally broken from her curiosity induced trance and made her way back to the entrance, bioluminescence throbbing behind her with the rhythm of living breath. It painted a rather surreal picture, her thin frame burdened by the weight of her instruments, silhouetted by an unholy creation whose only purpose seemed to harvest and redirect the living symphony of the sentient crystals. All of which was lit by those very same colonies, Remi wondered if the psychic things could understand him and Sola. Hubert certainly had painted them as possessing a sort of willful intelligence.

"This amalgamation is amazing. The xeno and bio tech are blending together in a symbiotic bond so subtle I can hardly tell them apart." Sola excitedly explored her readings, hoping to inspire some interest in Remi. "The harmonics singing from the crystals combined with the engineering of such a massive amplifier, it fuses materium and imaterium science into a perfect mix. If I'm right and this entire warp anomaly is a latent effect of its purpose, I wonder what it was meant to do."

"Kill, undoubtedly," Remi answered matter-of-factly. "Its description matches sixteen other known artifacts discovered at this date by the Disciplines of Thule, all found in dead systems along the Koronus expanse. All of which, I hate to admit, displayed evidence of some kind of connection with Yu'vath technologies. But don't tell Hubert I said that."

"Xeno-archeology Remi? I never knew!" Sola purred, excited at the prospect of having found a person to finally discuss some of her observations. She walked over to Remi who was standing stiffly at the chamber's entrance, eyes trying to pierce the darkness ahead of him. She leaned against the curvature of the tunnel and crossed her legs, resting against it. Her fingers still danced across her instruments, switching from one to the other along her harness.

"Xeno-archeology is forbidden lore my dear. I don't share my many scholarly pursuits with the uninitiated. The Emperor's Inquisition already have too much of an interest in me and my House."

"You don't trust me then?" Sola pouted jokingly, she knew better than to imagine people would instantly find her trustworthy. She was not Sigs after all, whose unexplainable knack for fostering loyalty was as evident as his foolish antics.

"The last time I trusted someone I was left to rot on a penal world for over six months." Remi admitted sourly.

Sola perked up, looking up from her augury tools. "I thought navigators were exempt from imperial law?"

"We are," Remi said, remembering the unpleasant business. "But the captain of the ship I was bound to had some seriously bad habits. One of which was cold trading. Xeno artifacts sold to the highest bidder left my lord dying on an inquisitorial excrutiator rack. Due to my limited part in the crime, and my navis nobilite status, I was abandoned on a prison world without trial or representation. No doubt the inquisition wanted to force my House into a precarious situation, after all my treatment at their hands was highly unorthodox. Inquisitors often play by entirely different rules, you see. If the Nostromo came to my rescue they would have proven that they knew of my activities. More damning still, that they had agents spying on inquisitorial affairs, so they left me to my fate."

"That's horrible Remi," gasped the vice factotum, genuine sympathy in her voice. It perturbed and comforted the navigator to hear someone take interest in his life. Not that he ever allowed others close. Perhaps this damnable endeavor was making him weak in the knees. The claustrophobic darkness didn't help one bit.

"It was. I was surrounded by filthy peasants who thought to take their woes out on the only mutant on the premises. After the first few demonstration of my powers, the clever ones tried their luck. At night, at meals, at the lavatory, it never ended. I had to hide, cheat, lie, and betray just to stay one step ahead. Not to mention hide the obvious third eye glowering out of my skull. Not that it helped, a cursory inspections could reveal me at any time, and did, more times than I care to remember. I was made into a freak, surrounded by savages. Scummy filthy apes, every single one of them." The hate was still powerful he realized, every memory breathing fresh life to dull scars.

Sola uncomfortably returned to her instruments. It hadn't occurred to him that she might consider herself, by his definition, a filthy peasant ape. "My apologies Sola, I get carried away. You know I don't consider you kin to those blatantly inferior mongrels of moronic stock."

Sola nodded, meeting his eyes. Few dared meet the gaze of a navigator but the _Semper Fidelis_ seemed full of them. "I know, but you sure give Sigs a hard time."

"Reasonably so. He possesses a brash and limited intellect that enjoys the company of orks. As if that was not damming enough, he constantly puts us and the crew in jeopardy. It's only a matter of time before he fails us."

Sola seemed to agree with Remi, but her conclusion differed. She hadn't chosen this life because it was safe, or easy. It was challenging and fast pace. It required wit and skill and daring. More importantly, for those who did not fit the mold that the Imperium imposed on them, this life was the only shot at freedom and acceptance they could ever hope for. It tended to attract rather eccentric forward thinking individuals, and Sigs was nothing if not that. He was free, Sola realized, smiling despite herself.

"Have you discovered something, Sola?" Remi asked as her face softly lit with the smile.

"Yes… well no, I have an idea of how to get the ship free." Sola communed with the machine spirits of her sensorium suit and synthesized its conclusions in her mind's logic engine. "But it will require some brash meddling and possibly a great deal of jeopardy."

"Great, here we go again," grumbled the navigator.

Sigismund had found a trail of rapidly crystalizing blood. The void was lethally cold but the lack of air also limited thermal exchange. There was just enough residual heat for his armor's senses to pick up. They had followed the winding tunnels to a dead end and found what they were looking for. A heap of mutilated bodies was piled meters high, ork and men alike thrown in an uncaring mound.

"Oie! Sumptin'killz em boss." Knuckles stated dumbly. Sigismund slid his powered blade out slowly, his auspex picking up movement a dozen meters behind them. They had been herded into an ambush.

"Turn about Knuckles, we are about to meet what did this." Raising his refractor shield, Sigismund adopted a traditional defensive stance while Knuckles limbered his muscular limbs and took his heavy axe in hand. Their ambushers slowly inched their way towards them, the ork's mighty search light illuminating their shapes.

A trio of large reptilian xenos slinked to the fore, their stony flesh pale from a life within the warrens. They reared on four powerful limbs, two more grasping strange guns to their chest and wickedly barbed hand-to-hand weapons. Their bodies were augmented with plates of armor stitched over the flesh of their vitals, featureless ovoid skulls splitting in wide jagged maws filled with sharp teeth. Their leader was a meter taller than its brood kin, rippling muscular mass augmenting its killing ability. One of its forelimbs was amputated and a long chain blade replaced it, slowly idling in the airless vacuum. The smallest of them was easily the height of Knuckles and Sigismund was willing to wager just as heavy, if not more. They would easily overpower him if he gave them the opportunity.

Before Sigismund could muster a strategy, Knuckles exploded into violence. The massive ork swung his hefty axe at the lead xeno, smashing into its parrying chainsword limb. Sparks flew as they both struggled to overbear each other. As quickly as it had begun, the ork was beaten back a few steps and the relatively smaller xeno scrambled up the cylindrical walls. They paid knuckles little attention as they hung at impossible angles from the tunnel surface, their weapons barking heavy barbed slugs at Sigismund.

The captain quickly knelt, sheltering behind the wide cover of his shield, its power field sparking madly. Sigismund aimed over his cover, firing bursts of mass reacting bolt shells at the reptilian xenos in the hopes of deterring them. They simply scurried away from the barrage of shells, working together to keep him pinned as they maneuvered for a better vantage point.

Knuckled roared as he charged again, he lifted his axe to swat away the abomination's chain blade and penetrated its guard. He was chest to chest with the cyber augmented nightmare, slamming his meaty fist into the creatures face. It screeched silently at the insolence of the greenskin but rather than fall back, it wrapped its taloned limbs around Knuckles in a crushing embrace, the chain blade spitting sparks against his suit's armored back plates. Its other limbs found purchase on the jagged suit and clawed at its soft material, using a barbed spike cruelly welded to its arm to pierced the suit and bury itself deep into Knuckles' sides.

The ork bellowed in pain, the warmth of his body draining into the void. Thankfully, his alien constitution would keep him alive and fighting long enough to obliterate his enemy. With the chain blade seeking to rend him in half, the ork lifted his axe high above his head and brought the spiked end down onto the snarling abomination. The creature took bludgeoning blows to the head and shoulder before snarling atavistically at the greenskin. It proved to be an ill choice as Knuckles' spiked haft shattered its sharp fangs and buried itself in the back of its throat. The xeno immediately released its grasp on the ork, his suit venting gases furiously.

By then, the flanking reptiles had found their perch and Sigismund's visor starting blinking with warning runes as the razor slugs ripped into the vulnerable joints of his power armor. The systems auto repair functions followed the war spirit's instructions to fill the gaps with sealing gel. Trusting his fate to the Emperor, the warrior rotated his stance to protect him from one of his assailants while opening himself up to the other. Razor hail ricocheting against his ceramite battle plate but penetrated into his neck and hips. It was time to see if his gamble had paid off. The xeno reptile that showered him with lethal fire had committed to its barrage. Sigismund lifted his storm bolter and pulled the trigger, explosive shells showering the stationary target. In seconds, the remaining fifty rounds of his magazine were emptied in a flurry. The xeno shuddered as the bolts penetrated its unarmored flesh and pummeled the rest, plates buckling under the punishing bursts. The creature slipped from its perch, sliding down along the curvature of the tunnel in a bloodied mess. Limbs had been sheared from its body, and what remained of the xeno poured its pulverized innards onto the stone surface of the tunnel. With a silent screech of baleful hate, the remaining xeno scampered down the wall in a six legged charge, only to be battered aside by Knuckles' charge moments before reaching Sigismund.

The abandoned abomination was writhing in pain, limbs flailing at the axe whose haft impaled its gullet. Retching in spasm, it pulled the offending obstruction with great difficultly.

Sigismund looked to it and its lesser kin, now desperately fighting off the juggernaut that pounded it with fists and boots. Leaving his shield behind, Sigismund grasped the hilt of his gladius in both hands and charged the abomination. Unable to focus on anything put the steel in its throat, Sigismund smashed into its elongated torso and buried the energized blade in its bowels. The abomination shuddered helplessly as lightning flickered over the powered blade, charring its inside. Pressing his advantage, the warrior bent low and used all the strength of his armor's servos to slice the blade upwards. The creature finally collapsed, its body split open by the energized edge of the short sword.

Knuckles was leering over his prone foe, grubby mits prying open the creature's mouth until it snapped. He wrestled with its flailing body, clawed arms and legs rending at his body, he ignored it as he crushed the life out of the creature. The ork pulled himself off the creature, suit still hissing in half of dozen places, and noticed a lack of things to kill. Disappointed, he rummaged across his suit pockets languidly and produced a long unmarked tube. He spent the next few minutes sealing his suit, and his flesh, with the greyish goo.

Sigismund picked up his shield and looked at the carnage his ambushers, and Knuckles, had wrought. "Glad you came along Knuckles," rasped the captain, recovering from his exertion. He could feel the blood flowing from his wounds within the suit, most of which came from the embedded shard in his neck.

"Yup," agreed the ork, still focused on his repairs. When he was done, he swaggered over to the abomination and ripped his weapon free. Few things made an ork happier than a good fight. These foes had put up a decent one, and for that, Knuckles was thankful.

"We need to get everyone together and finish this. The armsmen won't stand a chance if these things come after them." Sigismund tried his vox, expectedly finding nothing more than damned static. "Ever heard of the Rak'gol, Knuckles?" Sigismund asked his companion as they set out in the tunnels again.

"Nah, is daz what'em gits were?" asked Knuckles, unimpressed. Sigismund nodded gravely, far more concerned.

"Yeah, I think so. Hubert mentioned them once or twice. The thing is, they aren't supposed to be here. They plague the Koronus expanse, in the Alenic Depths. Been carving a swath through the place for centuries now. A bit far from home, are they?"

"If youz say so, boss." Clearly Knuckles' interest in the Rak'gol laid in little more than killing them, his attention had already wavered. He inspected his axe with a critical eye, unhappy with the damage it had sustained.

"Meet up with Sola and Remi would you, keep them safe. I'll go looking for the other teams," Sigismund asked.

"She ain't gonna be happyz," the ork mumbled as he traced a thumb over a particularly deep notch in his axe head.

"I know buddy, I know…" the captain and Knuckles parted ways at the junction that led to the crystal chamber.

Knuckles slung his axe and blinked a few times before setting out. His limbs were stiff, the cold having made them ache, and his boots sloshed with his own spilled blood. He tried to breathe deeply but the remaining air in his suit was thinning rapidly. His wounds itched and burned, his helmet's cracks plugged with his homemade repair pitch, and there was probably more of those things scurrying in the tunnels. Knuckles couldn't help but smile. It was a good day to be an ork.

Sigismund had finally rallied with the last of his armsmen to have survived. The walk back to the central chamber where his inner circle waited was a tense and morose. Over half his men had been taken in the dark, picked off one at a time when they were most vulnerable. He had often heard rumors of Rak'gol swarming and slaughtering their prey. If that was true, than these ones played by different rules. They were defensive, protective even. They were not the marauders that plagued the stars, they were guardians, and that meant there was something precious they were willing to die for.

The armsmen poured into the central chamber and took up defensive positions, the motions devoid of will, their bodies simply doing what it was trained to do. Thankfully, the stab lights had given them away before Remi could scour their souls from their bones, which was the only consolation these men had left. Knuckles hovered protectively around Sola, who looked anything but vulnerable. Her murderous glare followed Sigismund everywhere he went, her arms crossed angrily. She stood as implacable as titan.

"We need to leave this place. The locals aren't friendly," said the captain as his friends surrounded him. No one spoke, Remi was smiling, blatantly enjoying Sigs uncomfortable position, while Knuckles looked half way intimidated by Sola. After a pause, Sigismund sighed.

"I'm sorry," he finally said to Sola. She uncrossed her arms and picked up her data slate, a complex set of calculation and helpful diagrams explaining what she stubbornly refused to.

Remi translated, he doubted Sigismund had any clue of what all this meant. "Our dear Sola rightly calculated the frequency these crystals are oscillating at. A proper counter harmonic will tear this place apart and, hopefully, create a chain reaction that will leave the Beholder incapable of maintaining its anomalous field."

Sigismund leaned in towards the navigator for discretion, a useless gesture considering the situation. They all shared this private channel. "All it takes is for one moon to fail, just one?"

"Yes, Sigs!" Sola spat in her vox, shoulder still turned away from the captain. "Everything the Yu'vath built here is precisely measured, infinitely complex, and under normal circumstances, impossible to disrupt. But the crystal shells were breached and we were lucky enough to get here before they could mend." The trio uncomfortably waited for someone to answer Sola. Both Remi and Knuckles glaring at Sigismund to reap the rewards of his broken promise. No heroic, that was all she had asked. Instead, Sigismund had ventured into the Rak'gol infested tunnels alone, in a Yu'vath construct of immeasurable power, and after being ambushed and subsequently wounded.

"And how do we do that, Sola?" The vice factotum looked around the chamber, still fuming.

"Knuckles!" she called, the ork startled at the imperious tone. "Smash!" she ordered angrily.

It took a few seconds for Knuckles to get the gist of it, then he unlimbered his massive axe and leapt at the crystals she had designated. With relish, the brute smashed his weapon into the crystal, their hue changing and becoming ragged. He cleaved the pillars with wanton aggression and unfettered strength. It never grossed Knuckle's mind that his actions were tantamount with genocide, the billions of crystalline shards each a microscopic entity. It would not have phased him even if he did, ork instincts driving him mindlessly. Quickly, the hum of the chamber changed, the bioluminescence flickering angrily.

"I suggest we leave," Remi said, already on his way out. Sola grinned smugly as Knuckles became the instrument of her destructive impulse. Soon, the entirety of Sig's boarding team took to the tunnels amidst the hooting laughter of the excited Ork.

Refusing to let enemy retain the iniative, Trevin had sent Lancer to scale the shuttle. Dorskovy had hauled the slim Corvin on his shoulder, and much to their complaints, Lancer had climbed both of them up to the lighter's wing. From there, the skittish guardsmen had made his way to the cockpit viewing port, only to pale at the sight. Lancer had then mimicked a gun to his head and "pulled" the trigger. It seemed that the creature had tortured the pilot with its psyker tricks, far before it began hunting his men. Again, Trevin grumbled, he hated smart xenos.

"What's the plan veteran sergeant?" Hollis asked.

Trevin looked around their perimeter, guardsmen were in cover behind rocks, nervously watching the tunnel entrance, weapons in hand. Any moment, the xeno would return, no doubt with reinforcement. The crystal chamber Misfit had been occupying was filled with strange crystals, each and every one of them looking like one of those things. Hindsight a terribly useless thing to a soldier. It was obvious now that they had seen one of its kind in action. To make matters worse, small tremors were growing in frequency and size. They had started a few minutes ago, it felt like the damn rock was starting to pull itself apart.

"What are the odds of us blowing a hatch and not trashing the shuttle?" mused Trevin.

Dorskovy, the demolition expert, was called over and asked again. "About as likely as surviving a quake in hive Queberus," the trooper answered. Back on their home world, Ranok was plagued by frequent earthquakes. They often leveled entire sections of hives. It made pragmatists of its people and any Ranok worth his salt was a master of excavation. Trevin didn't understand the specifics of the expression Dorskovy had used, but he got the message.

"That's a no then. We are properly gakked, aren't we Hollis?" Trevin complained.

"Like a broodmare in a stable full of studs." Agreed Hollis.

Another tremor shook the moon, this time strong enough to split the surface the troopers were standing on. If the xenos would not kill them to a man first, then this rock would break apart, and Trevin guessed that the cavern the orks had blown out on the moon, the one they stood in, would be the first to go. Trevin cursed at the thought.

"Well, if we can't ride in it, we will ride on it."

"It's not a horse, Gus," stated Hollis.

"I know that, but if we have any shot of making it out of here in one piece, the shuttle is it. I guarantee you the rogue trader won't abandon his assets. It probably has a homing beacon on it, or maybe it's big enough for their ship to find. Either way, we don't have a choice."

"Alright Trevin, but make it quick, we have visitors." Hollis warned as he shouldered his shotgun.

Shadowy forms massed at the tunnel entrance. Dozens of sinuous reptiles were readying to charge. Unlike the techno-shaman, these ones had large barreled guns. Another tremor coursed through the moon as the firing began. Guardsmen were hugging their cover tightly as the fast moving xenos darted from cover to cover, their razored slugs threatening explosive decompression to anyone hit. When they slammed into armored carapace, men were thrown to the ground from the brutal impact. When they sliced through void suits, the results were all too quick and gruesome.

Trevin stood his ground in the relative safety of the lighter's shadow. He ordered his fire teams to peel back in waves, and coordinated support fire for the men closest to the rapidly advancing xenos. The fire fight was savage, more Kursk survivors dying by the minute. The most powerful tremor yet knocked Trevin on his back as a barbed slug passed where his head had been. Large furrows were carved into the inch thick visor but otherwise left it intact. It seems the lucky star he had been born under still watched over him. He kicked himself back up and added his shotgun's fire to the defense. A dozen men had already made it behind the cover of the lighter and used grappling lines and zero-gee harnesses to secure themselves to the shuttle's fuselage. Those lucky enough to be atop the shuttle crawled to its edge and rainne down support fire for their retreating comrades.

Corvin, Derrick, and Lancer had already climbed the fuselage by the time Melot ran by Trevin. He gripped at his friend's suit and yanked him away from the fight.

"You're spoiling my aim Jensen!" Barked Trevin as he was desperately trying to cover his men, stopping only to reload thick shells into the breach of his shotgun. Barely ten yards away, the xenos were pouncing onto men Trevin had known for the better part a decade, good men.

Sergeant Melot yanked again, slamming his friend besides the grappled line, ready for ascension. "No more heroic horse shit Gus, I'm making sure you're anchored to this useless piece of junk before everything falls apart."

The tremors were practically continuous now, the entire moon shaking itself apart for no apparent reason. Behind Melot a xeno reptile reared up, a pair of limbs tipped with scything blades ready to decapitate the vulnerable sergeant.

The killing blow was unexpectedly turned aside as a large trooper dived from the shuttles' back onto the fearsome xeno, the bladed limb missing its mark and slicing into Melot's shoulder. Trevin watched impotently as he took out an emergency sealing patch from his harness, unable to help the trooper who was now straddling the xeno and bludgeoning it ceaselessly with his shot cannon. Too late Trevin realized that it was Derrick, concussed and wracked with guilt, refusing to survive while another friend died. He was buying them precious seconds with which to escape at the cost of his life.

The creature twisted onto itself, the way only a lizard could, and stabbed Derrick repeatedly as he smashed its skull in with the twenty kilo cannon. Trevin and Melot scrambled up the line to the top of the shuttle, pained curses beneath their breath. As the wounded sergeant crawled away to secure his anchoring line, Trevin looked down, a hail of razor slugs forcing him to take cover. He had just enough time to see Derrick slump over the creature he had slain, foes entwined together in a morbid embrace.

The guardsmen were firing over the edges of the shuttle as the last tremor hit, the bedrock splitting beneath them. The shuttle fell away from the dying moon, its unnatural gravity failing. The soldiers we thrown off the dying satellite and flung to the extent of their tethers, a shamble of bodies colliding with each other and loose debris. The xenos were thankfully less lucky, falling away into the void, screeching impotently at those who had destroyed the source of their millennia long guardianship.

Again, by the skin of their teeth, the volunteer guards had survived, but not without losing many more of their comrades. People who had kept them sane through their shared misery, who had nurtured hope when it seemed lost, who had fanned the righteous fury needed to preserver. As they tumbled into the darkness, wired mesh lines anchoring them to safety, Trevin thought of Derrick's sacrifice. Had his survival truly robbed his life of its worth? Had the Emperor not given him no greater purpose than to die that others may live? How could Trevin ever repay the debt he owed the soldiers who had fought and died at his side?

Their gambit had paid off. The damaged cause to the harmonics of satellite Alpha had been enough to unbalance the Yu'vath artifice. What purpose it had once fulfilled now laid in waste. They may never truly know what the ancient warp magos of the Yu'vath, or the Rak'gol for that matter, had wanted with it. But as the planetoid and its moon shuddered in their death throes, Sigismund couldn't care less. Slowly but surely, the tides of the empyrean flooded back around the Beholder. More importantly, the reactor core was stable once more. Drive master Scartus performed the rites of re-ignition, and the Mechanicus adept was pleased. The master of etherics had homed in on the survivors of satellite Beta, sending a rescue party for the guardsmen minutes before their oxygen supply had depleted. Of the boarding team sent to satellite Cappa, there was no news, a terrible fate having no doubt befallen them.

The severing of warp space had pained Pater Nostromo greatly, and the senile navigator was being tended to by the specialized medicae of his spire. Remi took over the navigation proper of the ship and promised there would be no further difficulties as they plied the sea of souls to friendly port. Sigismund dearly wanted to believe him. Too much had happened on this adventure for him to wish any more opportunities for glory.

With the true nature of the Beholder at least partly illuminated, and the xeno-tech readings Sola had taken, Sigismund knew they could turn a pretty profit with the Adeptus Mecanicus explorator fleet, especially the sect of Disciples of Thule. If not, he knew of a few rogue trader who would be interested in plundering the planetoid's remains. With luck, they would cut even as Sola predicted. The senatorium of the dynasty would no doubt find that of little comfort. He could ill afford the detour he planned on taking, but Sigismund believed the guardsmen marooned on Kursk had well deserved their return home.

For those born to the stars however, like himself and countless others aboard, the _Semper Fidelis_ was home. They would continue to ply the edges of Imperial space, bringing the Emperor's light to the lost worlds teetering at the boundaries of the Astronomicon's reach.

After all, if not for rogue traders like himself, who would be mad enough to dispute the creatures that falsely claimed dominium over mankind's galaxy?


	4. Chapter 4

_**Into the Breach:**_

_**Part 4**_

So had he promised, so had he delivered. Remi sat uncomfortably in the navigator Primaris' mind impulse throne. Considering the events of the last few weeks, there had been no adept available to recalibrate the device's communion ports. This left Remi writhing in discomfort as the throne attempted to fuse his mind with that of the ship's machine spirit while being attuned to the Primaris' distinct psy signature. Pater, that accursed old goat, was still sleeping in his chambers.

He might as well have been dead for all Remi cared. Pater stirred fitfully when the ship sailed real-space, and showed signs of life only once the ship jumped into the sea of souls. It was clear to both junior navigators that Pater suffered from a bout of unresolved mutation while guiding the ship. Whatever this was, it was new. Meyer and Remi were at a loss, but with the duties of navigating the ship falling in Remi's lap, it was up to Meyer to catalogue the ancient's symptoms. The mutation had to be matched, or in the eventuality of its genesis being utterly unique, archived for the posterity of House Nostromo.

Remi opened his human eyes slowly, soaking in the abject silence of the throne chamber. While a navigator plied the Immaterium with his third eye wide open, a veritable miasma of lethal energy flared around him. Utterly invisible to the unaltered eye and absolutely lethal. Remi sat on the chair for what felt like an eternity. A lone and painful eternity.

Mad colours dashed against the ship's Gellar field. The flickering barrier sparking to life to compensate for the hungry creatures that raked their claws against its skin. All of this, the navigator saw with overlapping fields of sight. The material universe was dark and empty, its twinkling lights the sole reminder that life existed within the void's black curtain; the Immaterium, in all its blinding beauty, churning about the submerged vessel he guided; and finally, the symbolic interpretations of his gene wrought mind, translating the unknowable nature of the warp in something akin to time and space.

While Pater saw symphonies of lights, Remi experienced the warp's eddies as hashed vox ghosts. Meyer, that poor useless wretch often likened his experience to traveling a dense forest of lively scents. Truly, the navigator mind was an inspired creation, sculpted into a mental architecture capable of understanding the maddening protean flux that was the psycho active stuff of souls. But what kind of navigator plotted a course by scent? A third rate navigator, it seemed. Meyer's mental structure was unfortunately limited. The junior would forever be doomed to serve the House as an auxiliary. Perhaps he would imprint psychic markers onto Nostromo charts, or negotiate honorarium between House and Trader Dynasties. Meyer was little more than cursed. A mind with incredible insight, hobbled by a malformed nervous system.

Remi banished his melancholic thoughts with a mnemonic focusing tool, memories shaped and formed to serve this exact purpose, to centre him in the midst of the incredible forces threatening to dissipate all which made him an individual. The warp, even for mutants designed to negotiate its realities, was a dangerous place. Every journey was a gamble with mind, body, and soul as ante. Luckily for the _Semper Fidelis_, Remi was a consummate player.

A wall of static screamed at his senses. Quickly, he mind pulsed a correction in the ship's helm as the warp fluctuated and formed a reef of spontaneous soul stuff. With pain staking slowness, the ship tilted and changed heading, the clawed edges of the reef raking the side of the submerged vessel. Heat washed over Remi's arm. A sure sign that the Gellar shield was spread thin along the starboard array.

Tendrils of cold screaming voices knifed into his mind as the warp sought to penetrate the ship's hull. Gibbering pleas echoed in his head, cacophonic and hungry, soothing and inviting. Remi shuddered in the navigator's throne, the data spikes sending jolts into his spine, reminding him not to wander off with the voices. An unfocussed mind was little more than chum for the denizens of the warp. Without his will to guide the ship, without his desire to remain within his flesh, his soul would leak out of the ship's hull and damn the thousands aboard.

Slowly, the pleading ceased. The crooning alien sentience slipped off the ship's hull, unable to latch onto the mind behind the wards. With a quivering breath, the young navigator felt the aching cold seep out of his heart and fall from his sweating flesh in sheets.

This was only the latest of the potential disasters he had avoided while guiding the ship. Sleeping within her iron skin, the crew of the _Semper Fidelis_ remained blissfully unaware that hell had once again almost manifested amongst its decks. Every life aboard this ship, from captain to sump slave, owed him an incalculable debt.

A debt Remi would hold them to, whether they knew of it or not.

Meyer sat by his Primaris' side, running a soft hand across the hairless skin of his own forearm.

The medicae kit was open and its contents strewed across the spacious edge of Pater's bed. It was happening again. Meyer shuttered as he recalled how it had all began.

Three nights ago, Pater's newest infantile slave had come to Meyer with distress in his voice. The master, the child had claimed, was no longer breathing. The child knew very well the fate of a servant without a master, even after it's incredibly sort tenure of service. None of the Nostromo aboard the ship fancied child servants. Undoubtedly, the child believed its life forfeit with that of its master.

Meyer could easily relate. With his pitiful performance guiding ships in the warp, his aspirations in life were closely tied to those of his superior. So instead of comforting the emaciated child, assuring him that he would not be discarded, Meyer Nostromo had quickly raced to Pater's bedside in a panic.

The horror he had felt when he searched for the Primaris' pulse with frantic fingers was enough to make his lip quiver uncontrollably. The fear itself had been replaced moments later with a fathomless numbness. The decrepit creature he served had not only failed to present a pulse, but refused to respond to pain stimuli, or even to draw breath.

Pater was dead. Truly, unmistakably, dead.

Meyer had crumbled to the floor, grasping the velvet sheets of the bedside to slow his fall. Unable to word his shock, he had spent long minutes staring in abject denial at the motionless corpse of his master.

Where would he go? Remi was not a kindly man, he would never tolerate Meyer's impotence as his junior. He would no doubt tell their House.

Every navigator was required to serve a tour aboard a patron's ship, but after discovering his ineptitude, the House would relegate him to a tertiary position. A funerary bell tolled for the life he had been bred for. The only one he knew.

Finally, after shedding his last tears, he had crawled into the vast silk cocoon that shrouded Pater in perpetual shadows. There, he stripped the carcass of its swaddling blankets and pulled the liver spotted body closer to the edge of the large bed. With bone tired effort, he had lowered Pater to the floor where he could be more easily fetched by the servants. At the entrance of the senior navigator's chambers stood the half lit shape of the child slave. Its eyes peering deeply into the darkness with timid, frightened concerned.

Meyer waved the child closer, the drooping sleeve of his robes rustling in the silent bedchamber air. The slave hesitatingly approached. It was time to tell him what came next.

The servants would be summoned to fetch the spire master's lifeless body. They would wash him and robe him in his most sumptuous attires. They would carry the ancient navigator to a place of sacred worship within the tower where Remi and he would mourn the passing of their mentor. The juniors would give the old man his rites, sincerely and ceremoniously, and then send him to cryo-storage until the ship reached a friendly port with a Nostromo estate.

"You are free little one," Meyer told the child. The boy, barely more than five years old, stared at him in confusion. "Master Pater is dead." Still the child seemed unsure of what he heard.

A crotchety complaint echoed between them. Slowly, the pair looked down.

The two bereaved and confused souls creamed in terror as the old corpse began moving with a life of its own. Pater sat up painfully, his old bones groaning at the effort.

"Why in Throne's name am I on the floor?"

And so for three nights Meyer had sat at the bedside of his senior. And for three nights the morbid scene had played out again and again.

Meyer did what he always did. He strapped the vitae surveyors to Pater's body and watched as the old man died again. His heart stilled. His breath ceased. And every time, just as his body stiffened and showed no more signs of life, Pater rose from the dead.

With a sudden gasp, the ancient navigator sucked in a mouthful of air.

"How was it this time?" he asked, as if nothing out of the ordinary had transpired.

"The same," Meyer answered. "You were dead and now… you're not." The junior navigator couldn't believe the vitae returns he sampled from Pater's body. If anything, the old man was younger and fitter than he'd ever been in recent memory. "Where do you go, when you leave your body?"

"Anywhere I please." The ancient cackled as he flung his bed dressings away to jump out of bed. "Well, within the confines of the Gellar shield. Wouldn't want to be out there. Too many of those things follow me along the hull. It's… unpleasant.'

Pater down played their interest. He quickly gulped down some priceless amasec to steady his nerves. He could hear and feel them so much more clearly when he shed his coil. Pater was terrified of what they would do to him if they could slip through the shields and find him. The things they promised to do to him. They couldn't be described.

"And you are sure this is safe, Primaris?" Meyer left his thoughts unsaid. If this was a navigator mutation then it could be more or less stable. But if this was something else, a warp mutation, or a nascent psychic development…

The Nostromo line had long since meddled with the gene sculpting of its House. The results had not always been pure. Not always sanctioned.

Who knew which of them held the potential for blasphemy within their flesh? Flaws only years of mutation and devolution would bring to light.

"Are you questioning my judgement, you sniveling little wretch?"

"No, master. I-I am only concerned for your wellbeing." Meyer averted his eyes, focusing on the floor.

Finished with his drink, Pater threw the crystal goblet over his shoulder. It shattered against the wood panels of his bed chamber's wall. The old man, now unnaturally sprite, climbed back into the engulfing folds of his covers and prepared to sever himself from his flesh once again.

"Be less of a wet nurse and more of a proper Nostromo. It will do you good." Pater spat in passing.

With that, the ancient creature threw a paranoid glance at the younger navigator, who still demurely started at his feet. The junior nodded silently.

Pater felt energized by the warp, especially in such close proximity. It was a stark contrast to his waking moments in the material realm. There, he felt older and weaker by far. It was neither day nor night which ruled his rhythm now, but rather the plane of existence he was anchored to. Strange new marvelous possibilities were now open to him. Possibilities he intended to take fully advantage of.

Something the shivering eunuch at his bed side visibly dreaded.

_The warp dreams were always the worst. He stirred languidly in his bed when they came, just as he did now. His limbs brushed against the naked form of his supine lover. These nightly torrents of nightmares, he was used to. He could always wake and be comforted by the fact that they had all been illusions caused by the Immaterium's mysterious denizens. The deep dark fears that fed the sharks that swam its polluted seas._

_The vivid memory dreams were something altogether different. They couldn't be dismissed as false or fleeting. They were real. As real as the bones that hid beneath the sleeper's skin. And this memory was one he would rather not remember. But it was always the ones that cut the deepest that bubbled to the surface first._

Sigismund stood stock still as the Aquila Lander's ramp slowly lowered. At once, he was struck by the difference between his father's ship and this one. Its lighter bay was a cold undecorated cage of steel. It smelled of sweat and promethium fumes as men and servitors- grossly altered to perform their menial chores- thudded about the deck in dirty overalls.

Arrayed before the small prince was a formation of mean looking armsmen, their gleaming carapace parade ready, with their shot cannons held against their chest. The men looked hard, pitiless, and brimming with violence. Deep in his stomach, Sigismund could feel the fluttering wings of panic grow. He did not want to be here.

The seneschal accompanying the Imperial prince bowed low, paying homage to the formal scarlet of the dynasty's heir, and waved his arm in a broad invitation to disembark. The bald gentleman was swathed in simple robes which draped a long tail over a shoulder and its corresponding arm. Like the old men of the senatorium. It was trimmed with dark blue lines that snaked along its edge and marked his place in the convoluted hierarchy of the _Son of Ultramar_.

"Come now, young scion. Your father has allotted a strict timetable for this occasion."

Sigismund was prodded forward by the bald man as he delivered the young prince, barely 8 standard terran years old, to the Lord Captain of the dynastic warship.

"Scribe, why do I have to live here now?" the doe eyed child asked.

"Seneschal, young scion. I am not a scribe," the robed servant corrected indignantly. "You are to begin your training as an officer, as befitting the martial tradition of the Lucius dynasty."

"But father said," the prince hesitated as they approached the line of arms men. "He said, I'd train when I became a man. Am I a man now?"

The stately bureaucrat seemed to ponder how to phrase a response, finally settling on the truth of it. "Lord Anthonid is the bearer of the charter of trade, young scion. His will is law on the flotilla, his wisdom and that of the senatorum unimpeachable. You may not be a man yet, but you have been chosen to bear the mantle of one none the less."

The answer was gibberish to Sigismund. Just as the child was about to ask again, the seneschal and his precious ward stood before the smart dressed figure of the _Semper Fidelis'_ master. The naval officer was standing in his most formal and decorated dress uniform. Heavy medals and sparkling pins glimmered beside golden tassels and braided aiguillette. More impressively, a top his crown sat a plumed hat, its wide crescent shape a thing of marvel to the little man.

"I present the scion and heir of Anthonid Lucius, descendent of marvelous Ultramar, jewel of reason and valor, master of the Maiden world and-"

"I bloody well know who my nephew is Talamos, I served his father longer than you've been alive. Now be silent and spare me the ceremonies. We both know why he's here."

Lord Captain Hubert Delouse brushed the gaping seneschal aside and lowered himself to meet Sigismund's eyes. The boy had grew much since he and Anthonid had fallen out. By the Emperor, he had his mother's soft, gentle features.

"You remember me, don't you Siggy?"

"Yes, Uncle Hubert. But father says not to call you uncle. That we are not related." The prince timidly looked into the commander's eyes, there he saw a kind glint that made him smile.

"I bet he did, and in that he is technically correct. We were the kind of brothers only battle and adventure can make. But I know for a fact he also is fond of those who think their own minds.'

The bald statesman coughed in his fist and shook his head softly.

The Lord Captain barely spared the lapdog a glance and smirked at his nephew. "Well, he used to anyway. What say you Siggy?"

The scion looked up at the disapproving bald man in his crisp white robes and then to the mischievous captain with the bright smile, whose mood was infectious.

"Uncle Hubert!" the child decided as he threw his arms around the bigger man's neck. The seneschal rolled his eyes despairingly as Hubert straightened himself up, young Sigismund in his arms.

"You are hereby charged with the safety and security of the dynast's heir. His fate, tied to yours, until the day you are relieved of your duties. As the Emperor is your witness, swear that not even death will resolve you of this sacred task an-"

Hubert pointedly ignored the traditional oath being voiced by Talamos and turned to the assembled Armsmen. "Behold, the son of the Lion!" The Lord Captain raised the boy high and settled him on one broad shoulder.

The crowd roared in salutation, even the menials raising a fist high to the youngling prince. A gleeful giggle escaped the heir's lips as he marveled at the passion directed at him. Suddenly, the white-washed marble walls of the _Son of Ultramar_, its great arching portals and stained glass murals, its vertiginous vaulted ceilings, and sculpted cannonades meant little to the beloved prince. The men and women aboard this dark stinky ship were quite different, but perhaps that wasn't so bad. Perhaps change was good.

Hubert lowered the heir back to the lighter's deck and leaned in conspiratorially. "Every single of these grizzled warriors will die before harm befalls you. Do not fear them, or the unknown they represent. Do not think less of them, for whatever they may do, they do it for you. And never waste the noble sacrifice they are willing to perform in your name and that of your dynasty, for the Emperor favors the bold, alright?"

The words that would shape his leadership for years to come were spoken then, but the young prince could not phantom the depths of their meaning, not for many years to come.

"Alright!"

_The pain of the memory laid dormant in its implication. For years to come the man Sigismund would grow to be would remember this day. If not for the guiding avuncular affection of Hubert, the day would no doubt had been darker, colder, and more alien than it had. But it could not erase the truth of his exile, from the loss of a father's light. It gnawed at his soul, leaving its scars on a child who was never told why love had deserted his life. His mother's taken from him in the death that brought him life, His father's a pained weak thing that could never bare the light of its expression._

_The truth escaped him, even though he knew many who could enlightened him. They had never broken their silence, never legitimised his doubts, and never admitted to the sin which they kept secret. But in their eyes he could see. In Hubert's, and his father's, and the hooded eyes of the senatorium elders who after half a century, still thought of him as unfit, and underserving of his father's mantle. _

_No child deserved this burden. No man could live without the shelter of a warm embrace. And this the warp reminded him. Painted anew ieith the fresh grief of his heart. If fear would not break the will of man, than doubt surely would._

Chief bosun Ribella, Ship's Confessor Alabaster, and Twist Catcher Devros were meeting face to face in a most unusual place.

Where four narrow passageways met in the ship's underdecks, the trio had assembled to discuss the troublesome, and sensitive, case of trusted voidsman Bowie. The true underdecks were nothing like the higher interstitial decks. Those were used to access maintenance hatches, power systems, ventilations, and the numerous requirements of shipboard essentials. They were dirty, cramped, dusty, and more often than not, home to a few breeds of mutated life forms indigenous to the _Semper Fidelis_.

But a man couldn't hide there for long.

Of course, trusted voidsman Bowie probably wouldn't qualify as a man any longer, and when that happened it was the sump decks, the laundry mills, and the chem tanks that became their destination. Wretches and mutants, one and all, came here to survive. The problem was, as a trusted voidsman, Bowie had been given the right to wander to every part of the ship to perform the delicate tasks that were beneath the machine cult's optimal labour assignments, but too vital to wait for the rare luxury of docking at a voidstation.

In other words, Bowie knew the ship in and out, and exactly what to mess up if the mad mood struck him.

"And you're sure the proper benedictions were offered?" Asked Ribella, carefully parceling the blame.

The Drussian ecclesiarch nodded patiently. "The hymns, the canticles, and the rites alike. We deliver the protection of the God-Emperor whenever we receive fair warning before a jump."

"Never mind that,_ padre_. How did this all start?" Devros grumbled. In his experience, mutation occurred in the broken. The warp could wiggle its way into the mind, body, or spirit of a host without even the slightest of effort, if the right conditions existed. The ship wide precessions, with their swinging censers and their holy incense did nothing more than fortify the soul of a believer. Not everyone could armor themselves in their faith, some were less than sincere with their prayers.

Ribella glared at the mismatched bounty hunter and the strange gear festooning his attire. "Bowie survived the last warp riot in the gunnery decks by crawling inside a coolant pipe. It took days to get him out after the riot was subdued. He was too afraid to come out himself. Since then, his fellow voidsmen have commented on his… skittishness."

"Fear is the seat of corruption. Let his light shine the doubt away. Let his might show us the way," Alabaster prayed. Commending the soul of the poor rating to the Emperor's judgement. "The displeasure of the Emperor is evident in the ships recent tumult.'

"And then?" Devros pressed, ignoring the confessor's now brooding expression.

"Then nothing," Ribella's hard tone soften reluctantly, "until he was discovered indulging his twisted appetite two weeks later."

The socially stunted twist catcher expressed his irritation by making a strange noise, glaring at her to be more precise. "Which was…"

"Clearly unnatural and vile. Are the details of his blasphemy all that relevant?

"How do you expect me to track him, bosun? Foot prints? Scent? Emperor forbid, sight? Its dark, nauseating, and unyielding metal down here."

"Let's not take the master of mankind's name in vain, shall we Devros?" the ship's confessor tutted.

"My apologies, _padre_. But the longer we dawdle the harder it will be to find him. Now if the chief bosun can get on with it, we're standing ankle deep in seepage, it's the gakking under decks here not the ballroom. I don't have time for all this dancing about."

"Fair enough," Ribella admitted as she became aware of the sludge lapping at her polished carapace boots. "We believed he developed a taste for tainted blood. The most attainable of which was discarded items soiled by…" she sighed at the recollection of her men's discovery. "Menses."

Alabaster immediately made the sign of the Aquila. "It appears it is far too late to help this wayward soul. Often, the lost feast upon the corruption expelled from the human body. We must put him down. "

"Agreed" Ribella spat.

Devros had seen worst. But at least now he knew where to look. Chances were he could set a few traps by the waste reclamation systems. Then again, there was a healthy number of rodents that could no doubt feed a taste for tainted blood. That was, if Bowie had not degenerated to the point of simply hunting the other mutants down here. Or, perhaps, he would use the maintenance byways to raid the upper decks for more soiled samples.

On second thought, Devros really didn't know where to start looking.

"Be careful twist catcher. My armsmen cornered him yesterday, before he went down here. He sent two of them to the medicae deck and chief surgeon Madga hasn't given them the best of odds. He's unnaturally strong."

Devros nodded. A stratagem slowly forming in his mind. After three decades of hunting criminal filth across the Calaxis sector, he had retired to the comfortable life of twist catcher. The job only marginally less dangerous than bounty hunting, and infinitely more appropriate to his social inclination. At least the less aggressive of the mutants of the underdecks didn't mind his poor etiquette. Or his broken low gothic.

"Oh, and Devros, he also grew a few more appendages." Ribella added. Besides her the priest crossed his arms over his chest again.

"Huh-huh." Devros hated the unstable strains. They grew too damn fast for his taste. It was time to start the hunt, and the clock had already begun ticking.

_Some things were better left in the past. None the less, here she stood again, victim of the empyrean and its incessant habit of plucking at ones insecurities. Her body shivered as her unconscious mind caused her to grip the sheets, seeking comfort in the touch of another living soul. Her hands searched for familiar warmth as she struggled to deny her memories, especially this one, which still sat ragged and raw in her mind._

It was to be her special day. Her life had been far from idyllic on Hesh, forge world of the Lathe system, but still. She was waiting for the news she knew would come. The news that heralded a better future for her broken family. The news that she had passed the examinations and would be accepted within the priesthood of mars.

The news never came. She remembered sitting quietly in her initiate robes for the magos from the invigilator department to read off the names of the successful applicant. Instead, it was her mother that had arrived, an utter breach of Mechanicus examination protocol, her eyes red with tears.

Without warning, without as much as an explanation, her mother had taken her from the labour resource department of factotum 46-H-Beta. Through her mother's sobs, twisting between the throngs of workers marching to their appointed shifts, she had been told of her father's demise.

Her biological father, not Joachim, with which her mother and she lived in their claustrophobic civil life module. The man she had glimpse only shadows of during her entire life, the man she had dutifully studied her childhood away to one day meet, the data scryer, adept Cyrion.

The young woman, whose name was not Sola yet, fought to forget. How powerful these dreams were, to force upon her the bitter tears of a life torn from her hopeful grasp. She had no choice but to visit the salted wounds anew. Their stinging torment impossibly renewed.

A long, long time ago, her mother had told her the story of the forbidden romance that had bloomed between an overseer and one of his charges. How Cyrion the newly minted adept had fallen for the lay worker Tilia.

She, who despite 16 hour shifts, day in and day out, and little or no understanding of the machines she tended, dutifully uttered her prayers to the machine god. Tilia, whose passion and humility invoked in him a deep affection, one which blossomed despite its unsanctioned nature. In her, the tech priest saw a soul who lived for the glory of the Omnissiah and nothing else. In him, she saw a holy being who in spite of being touched by the divine, turned from the beauty of the machine to find in her a worthy love.

Sola now watched her mother throw together a hasty traveling satchel. She questioned her parent's secret love again, could it truly had been so strong? Had she not cared and loved his offspring despite the added penalties heaped upon her for unlicensed procreation. Had she not struck a bargain with the pariah they lived with, a man whose loins burned cold for women; that she may be true to her lover even after 16 long years. Her love had certainly been unconditional, had his?

The thought of Joachim interrupted her train of thought, she chastised herself for her lack of mental focus, all the same he lingered. Her false father, the man who had kindly and gently help raised her. What would happened to him now? Would his secret come to light if he refused to bed a women from the breeding pogroms? The illusion of marriage had protected him so far, and as Tilia hurriedly prepared her daughter's bags, Sola wondered if the kindly old worker would be ok.

The brotherhood did not abide by superstitious beliefs or social mores. Sola seriously doubted that even a single tech priest cared for Joachim's leanings. But a worker that did not reproduce himself was an inexcusable mismanagement of resources. If he would not breed, then they would send him to work in the genatoria complex of their factotum. The workers there were made barren soon after by the radiation anyway. Many died decades younger than their peers. At least as an adoptive father, childrearing had spared him the worst of labours.

They would be gone before he returned from his shift. Joachim would probably never know what had become of them. It hurt Sola to abandon someone she cared for. Today, it seemed she would lose two fathers.

Sola was now rushed by her mother through the thoroughfare of the spire shuttle station. Sola didn't even know where they were truly heading, and was took shocked to care. She had never even left the factorum spire during her entire life. She still didn't even know why they were leaving now, not really. Cyrion was dead, but what of it? Yes, it had crushed her naïve hopes of mending her family, but why were they fleeing their homes?

Not for the first time she mused if this distant father was worth all the pain and sacrifice she and her mother endured. Had her mother been foolish in thinking so? He would visit every solar cycle. In the dark of night he came, a shadow of Martian red and dull augmentics. Cyrion and her mother would talk the night away, and he would tend to her deteriorating health with his miraculous devices. Each morning she would haggardly prepare herself for her labour shift, having not slept a wink, but by the Omnissiah did she smiled. She possessed a vitality rarely seen in any lay worker of 46-H-Beta.

Each time he came, he would leave data slates with lessons and esoteric knowledge for her to study in his absence. She knew the man only by his annotations and the kind words he left to encourage her. Green text on black screens. Her father, the data ghost.

It had taken until her 10th birthday to discover the reasoning behind his visiting pattern. They met on a very special occasion, the day of her birth. Though no one celebrated the advent of births on the forge world, it was a shared memory both her parents kept alive. Their love, made manifest in her every breathing moment.

Even though he had never spoken to her during her waking hours, the lingering scent of sacred oils by her bedside in the mornings after his visits hinted at his unspoken feelings. She had convinced herself that all these disparate facts meant he loved her too. Now, she would never truly know.

Her mother's frightened eyes tore her attention from the reverie. A dream within a dream. No, it was a lack of attention, pure and simple, a sin against the Deus Mechanicus. They were stowed away in the dark cargo compartment of the inter-spire shuttle. Tilia ran her oil stained hands in Sola's shorn hair, desperate affection in the gesture.

"Now listen well, my love. Your father…" her mother bit back her sobs, her eyes reflectively wet. "He broke many rules for us. The extra rations, the scholam materials, he even convinced the data spirits to overlook a mistakes I made on the production lines. A mistake that would have seen me lobotomised."

Sola refused to hear her real name, hidden long ago within the data vault of her cranial cognomen, but she knew her mother spoke it then. The young girl who was too distraught to interrupt her weathered mother shared her worried glances.

"He loved us very much, my child. Never forget that. But adepts within the Mechanicus took objection to his heresies. They seek to redress his wrongs, to obliterate his sins, all of them. They seek to eliminate us."

Tilia pressed the child against her breast, the youngling's tears breaking the dam holding back her own. Sola remembered the strange salty taste of her tears. An anomaly to a tongue used to bland tasteless nutrition.

Sola did not understand then. Not truly, not as she did now.

"Shush my love, don't worry. Your father did not leave us without protection. His blessings continue to guard us even now." Her mother kissed Sola's tears away, a hopeful smile breaking the panic in her face. "Somehow, he sent a servitor to our habitat. It told me about your father's fate and what to do next. It's all prepared for us, a way off the forge world. A ship out of the Lathe worlds, to safety. It's all going to be ok, my love."

It appeared that his love had been unconditional as well, Sola concluded.

_Her mother had been right of course. Her father had planned his contingency perfectly. Even in death, he managed to watch over them. That is, until their escape ship skipped Port Wander all together and made a break for the Koronus expanse with its holds full of cargo it had no right to take. That's went all the carefully laid plans of her deceased father had fallen to pieces. He had failed to consider the extent by which a ship's captain, one willing to accept a bribe to transport wanted fugitives, might be motivate by greed rather than reason. _

_Abandoned with her mother in Footfall, a piratic den of Rogue Traders and xeno lovers, their lives had quickly spiralled out of control. Thankfully, she woke up before she could experience that hell all over again._

The touch felt like a funeral shroud. The airy fabric a reminder that you no longer belonged to the world of the living, despite being achingly close to it. It was also rude and vulgar in its attempt to communicate. At least, that's what Sigismund guessed it was doing.

At first, Sigismund had awaken with the bleary eyed confusion of the dreamer, his youthful self now fading into the memory that had conjured it. The naked captain sat himself up and massaged a forceful palm against his slumbering features to force some blood through them. He reeked of vivacious lovemaking, and a casual glance at the huddled shape of his most recent partner reminded him why.

Then the shiver came. Not like the energetic shuddering of muscles releasing nervous tension, nothing quite as mundane as that. It was like fingers running along the contours of his mind, a momentary dull ache that disappeared as quickly as it came. Sigismund had felt worst in his years plying the warp.

When the captain set his waking bones into motion by standing, he felt a feeble pull begging him towards the bed. Thinking he had woken his tryst, and that she subsequently wanted more of his attention, he turned with a smile and a quip. The playful utterance died on his lips. His lover still greedily clutched at the bed sheets far from where Sigismund stood, in all his naked splendour.

He felt the tug again, this time from the edge of his sight, drawing his eyes to the soft thrumming of the air reclamator nestled in the ceiling, its scything blades hypnotically calling to him.

Madness and the warp came hand in hand. The trick, Sigismund remembered, was to ignore it. Despite that gem of wisdom, the captain walked over to his weapon display and produced an ancient boarding cutlass from its humble collection.

This particular piece had been won repelling void pirates during a passage in Winterscale's Realm, a subsector- if such a word could be used so generously- north of Port Wander, give or take a few days' warp travel. Hopefully, it would serve Sigismund better than it had Ygrid "Throne Bane" Scharmlig.

Whatever entity had woken him from his slumber, for whatever ill game it desired to play, gave off the most curious of impression. The captain absently noted an eerie similarity, felt more than heard, between the impression and the cathartic indulgence of a series of explicative. The presence, in a most singularly human act, felt as if it was swearing at him.

Then it all came crashing down on him.

Of all the tight spots he had found himself in, this was by far the most unpleasant. Devros inched his way through the duct works that spanned the Semper Fidelis' command deck. He doubted that even his status as ship's twist catcher, bestowed upon him by the Lord Captain himself during their first, last, and brief introduction, would save him from the armsmen were they to find him here.

But that was of secondary concern to Devros. Because firstly, if he couldn't get unstuck by the time trusted _–by-the-Emperor-would-you-look-at-that freak_\- voidsman Bowie doubled back and found him… well, let's just say he would be returning to the sump decks in an altogether different form.

He'd be eaten, is what he was getting at. Then excreted by the mutant's bowels a score of days later.

It was an awfully strange time to start thinking about where exactly he spent most of his days, but tension had a way of robbing a situation of its dignity, not that he had much to spare.

With a final gurgle of exertion, his heavily armed bulk jarred forward towards freedom. Devros plopped out into a corridor slightly less constricting, shamelessly falling down onto the iron meshed flooring before untangling himself of his weapons. Regaining some semblance of a fighting stance, he looked about in the darkness, his stab light bouncing off dusty metal beams and rubberised power couplings. Funny, how things had progressed.

It was by the Emperor's providence that he had come upon a small group of frightened and dispossessed mutants. Perhaps mutants was a bit too cruel a label for the bewildered crewmen who had fallen prey to slight genetic fluctuation. An extra eye here, blind with cataracts. An unusually long four knuckled finger there, curling disturbingly. Nothing that couldn't be overlooked.

Unless you were a superstitious, Emperor-fearing, xenophobic, dogmatic creed thumper. Which Devros guessed was everyone aboard this ship, let alone the Imperium.

But Devros was not one of them. He had seen enough human evil to question his inborn assumptions about people. Bounty hunting did that to you.

People dressed it up nice and pretty. They rationalised on what grounds they could hurt others. Always making sure not to stand on the same patch of land. But in the end, they were all capable of atrocities, and using the God-Emperor as an excuse to do it was the real shame. Then again, Devros mucked about sewage enforcing those same ideologies for a living, so who was he to judge?

So instead of shooting them dead where they stood, Devros talked to the new residents of the underdecks. They told him everything he needed to know. Bowie was mutating wildly. He had lost all semblance of humanity in his short time since that first strange mutation. And he had needed to feed to fuel the aberration his body had become. He was eating others of his kind, which meant Devros was on the menu too. It was one thing to get killed, but the thought of being eaten after made him scowl.

Devros might not know where Bowie was at the moment, but he knew where he would be heading. Every deck had its crew, some more tender then others. The under decks held twisted broken things; the engineering decks held the machine men of the Mechanicus; battery decks had its press gangs; the maintenance decks were usually filled with ratings, but considering where this began, it was a sure bet those would be empty. That only left the midship and the command decks as the choices morsels, because even a crazed mutant would steer clear of astropaths and the navigators.

Unfortunately, Devros didn't clear muster as far as access codes were concerns. His job was to tend to the underdecks. He was far too filthy to be seen in public. But the twist catcher knew someone who did have the codes; who knew the access and ducts ways and like the back of their hand; someone, Emperor provided, who hopefully wouldn't think of locking them behind him as he went.

They came down in a heap of flailing limbs and colorful curses, followed by the shrieking of a surprised woman, and the wafting smell of warmed up waste.

The wrecked air airduct, jagged blades and all, came crashing after them. Quickly, the mob of unruly limbs came apart to resolve into two adversaries slashing at each other with deadly intent. The first was a haggard looking man festooned with eclectic equipment, cloaked in a fabric brown with filth and trailing muck all over Sigismund's lush carpet. By the size of him, he had clearly been an enforcer of considerable bulk, though age and a life of abuse had tried its best to diminish him.

The other, was something wrought out of hate and spite. A vision straight from an ecclesiarch's depiction of hell and corruption. Bald from scalding acid burns and wearing a half shredded bodysuit, it lashed at its opponents with fingers of mismatched claws. Ropy appendages burst from its torso and shoulders to whip about menacingly, disarming its bladed adversary and lashing his limbs. What might once had been a human face was a flailed mask of stringy meat with jagged teeth, odd bulbous orbs wet with secretions darted about like panicked eyes.

The seconds it took the pair to separate was all the mutant needed to take advantage of his new freedom of movement. Unhindered by the tight confines of the access ways, its many tentacles unfurled to bring the enforcer to his knees.

Sigismund leapt in the second the dust settled, but too late, one of the mutant's quivering orbs settled on him and the last remaining appendage wrapped around his neck. A few awkward swings of the cutlass found the rubbery tentacle impervious to its edge. The combatants struggled and groaned as the unnaturally strong limbs held them helplessly in place, slowly crushing the life from their bodies.

Viscous saliva poured from the fanged maw of the mutant as it used its human hands to deprive the twist catcher of his arsenal. Its hunger grew with the promise of fresh prey ready to be devoured. Devros fought back, muscles bunching as he tried to break from the flexible limbs, but the mutant held him tight. It unhinged its jaw, readying itself to consume the twist catcher's head, when its altered perception caught a glimpse of the naked man pointing his useless blade towards it.

What "Throne Bane's" cutlass lacked in sharpness, it made up for in surprise. Its previous owner's devious tendencies had inspired this ostentatious piece of martial decoration's twofold duplicity. In a questionable act of convoluted trickery, Ygrid's cutlass was in fact a one-shot plasma weapon hidden in the form of a sword, masquerading as a ceremonial display of wealth. At this very exact moment however, Sigismund thanked the silly pirate as he pressed the hidden stud along its grip.

A small gem, one of many to decorate the wide basket hilt, glowed with effervescent light. A fraction of a second later, the miniaturised plasma core erupted along a preordained magnetic path. The result was a brilliant dart of superheated gas, like those usually found in digital ring weaponry, which speared towards the monstrous mutant. The shot caught it squarely at the shoulder, disintegrating its arm and the chunk of meat which anchored the tentacle presently choking Sigismund to death.

With a roar of slime splattering saliva, the mutant curled onto itself, blinded by the sudden pain of the throbbing wound. Its ropy appendages convulsed in sympathetic pain, freeing Devros for the handful of seconds he needed to pick up one of his blades from the floor. With a cry born of desperation, and oxygen starved lungs, the twist catcher flung himself upwards in a brutal tackle. His skinning knife's tip rammed itself in the soft under flesh of the mutant's jaw as they came crashing down, driving the cold steel further into its malformed skull.

The mutant flailed its one remaining arm and its many tentacles in a final mortis cry, while Devros sliced the knife's edge down its throat, a mess of putrid blood erupting from the ruptured artery. As the creature's quivering mass settled, the twist catcher dragged himself onto his feet. He was dizzy from an under oxygenated brain, staggering as he straightened up, drenched in foul blood.

Before him, equally catching his breath, stood the Lord Captain in all his naked splendour. Devros quickly averted his one good eye, standing uncomfortably before his captain, unannounced and uninvited.

Armsmen burst into the room, quickly surrounding the two men and the blanket draped woman clutching the captain's private vox-thief. They quickly assured themselves that the beastly corpse on the floor was dead and began to order the unfamiliar, blood drenched stranger to his knees. Sigismund waved them away. Behind the captain, the armoured form of the master-at-arms, Legatus Keever, stomped into the room.

It was a strange scene. The ravenkin was standing naked with a decorative sword in hand; a steaming pile of mutated flesh leeked fluids on the expensive Jokaero rug; and a grizzly under decker was asking for permission to adjust his eye patch. The naked woman was not so unusual, the master often took women to warm his bed, though they usually didn't end up in tears.

"Ravenkin, is all well?" Keever rumbled.

Sola appeared then, dressed in a hastily thrown on body glove. She had the look of a rudely awaken neighbor. Her wide eyes took in the scene. "Why is he naked?"

Sigismund gave Keever and Sola the "all clear" hand sign as he walked over to the bed.

"Why are naked?" Sola asked again, the only person in the room drawing attention to the awkward fact.

Sola computed the anomalies. The mutant remains were unsettling, but not an impossible occurrence of shipboard life. The ragged blade man was quickly identified as the ship's twist catcher, hired by herself years ago, which explained both his and the mutant's presence quite easily.

The naked woman was no surprise at all -considering Sigs' lecherous tendencies- and given the hour, it was clear to Sola that the lechery had not been interrupted by the mutant. Obviously, Sigs had not be caught entirely unaware, for he was generally unharmed, except for the bruises around his throat, which could not entirely be accounted for by the mutant's attack.

Additionally, Sigs had seemingly had enough time to travel halfway across the room, moving past his dresser in doing so to fetch a weapon. Not to mention the time it took for an entire squad of armsmen to barge in and secure the room. So why was he _still_ naked? All this, her mind had catalogued and queried long before she had even spoke. His lack of shame at his naked state was the only variable she had no answer for, and no one seemed willing to tell her.

The captain quickly wrapped the soft sheets around his body in a form reminiscent of the senatorum's togas.

Sigismund pointed the spent cutlass at the dirty man in his bedroom. "First of all, who are you?"

"Devros, sire."

The captain panned his gaze across his bedroom's occupants, clearly not remembering the name's owner.

"He's the twist catcher, Sigs." Sola huffed.

"Well, that explains _that_." Sigismund pointed at the carcass with the sword. "But it doesn't explain how they made it into my quarters, does it?"

"My apologies sire, I did not meant to intrude so far into the command decks. I just followed the mutant." Devros was anxiously wringing the edge of his cloak, a thin putrescent liquid falling from his fingers.

"Keever, get someone to crawl up there," the captain waved the cutlass emphatically, much to the dismay of the armsmen next to him, "and seal the passages that lead to my bedroom."

"As you command, ravenkin." The master-at-arms banged his fist against his chest and barked his orders. They security detail filed out with the tearful young woman, the twist catcher, and the mutant corpse.

"Oh, and Devros, was it?"

The filthy ex-bounty hunter slowed his pace and turned about. Clearly uncomfortable to be around so many people, any of which could demand his head on platter if he offended. Which he often did.

"Y-yes, Lord Captain?"

"Don't be so rigid, man." Sigs smiled, putting the haggard bruiser somewhat more at ease. "You just saved my life. Get yourself a scrubbing and come back for breakfast. I want to hear how all this started, I bet it's a good story too."

The eye-patched filth encrusted man smiled a jagged broken smile. "Aye-aye, sir."

Sola stayed behind after everyone had gone. She looked more awake now, and angrier. The way she radiated with barely contained frustration entertained Sigismund, in a perverse kind of way.

"Throne's sake Sigs, she was barely half your age." Sola crossed her arms and walked around the room tabulating the expenses of the maintenance to the captain's quarters.

"How do you know how old I am?" smirked the captain, putting away his gilded cutlass.

"I have access to the ship's files." She tapped her temple with a well-manicured nail, a look of exasperation clearly writ on her features.

"Come on now," Sigismund walked around his room, sniffing with disgust, "She's old enough to serve on a warship as an ensign. It's not like I robbed the cradle here."

Sola raised a doubting eyebrow, "Karen Ulasius, position: ensign, rank: lieutenant 3rd class, probationary period. 20 standard terran years old, origin unknown, taken into service at Port Footfall in the spinward Calaxis sector. Need I go on? I ratify all the employments on this ship Sigs, you're almost old enough to be her grandfather."

"Almost." The captain shrugged playfully. "After a few rejuvenat treatments, the lines get a little blurry. It's all about how you feel on the inside. Why? Do you suggest a more mature vintage then? Because I could do with a change of bed, all things considered."

Sola mulled the idea over for the entirety of a breath before brushing aside his advances. Most of which involved pressing himself uncomfortably close against her. Well, it wasn't entirely uncomfortable, but she wasn't a young schola girl anymore. She certainly wouldn't settle on being another notch on his bedpost, not with such a paltry attempts at seduction anyway. Though, maybe one day he could be one on hers.

Sola laughed as she brushed him aside, swaying as she left his malodorous quarters. "Not tonight Sigs, you're on your own."

The captain tightened the bed sheets around his body. "It appears so." He took another whiff, his nose crinkling, and decided it was paramount he found a more suitable berthing tonight. Keever certainly wasn't using his bunk at the moment, and their distant family ties could always be counted on to grease the wheels. Sigismund swaddled his way over to his private vox and keyed in the master-at-arms' frequency.

Pater woke with another ragged gasp, the vitae monitors chiming in a panic. It took a moment for the elder to reconcile the images in his mind. One moment he was traveling along the ship's command deck, the next he was pulled back into his body. The return was a frightful experience. It was like falling into ice cold water and then immediately drowning. It left him shivering from the cold and gasping for air, something that only existed on the other side of the divide.

A startled Meyer quickly shut the overwhelmed medicae equipment. Habit should have taught him to be ready, but he couldn't get used to Pater's nightly resurrections. The elder's life signs would first slow, and then dwindle to nothing moments after. Although the body died, the spirit still soared. This of course Meyer could only assume, but because Pater would inevitably rise from his deathbed like a thunderbolt, he was fairly confident in his appraisal.

"Water, Quickly!"

The junior navigator obeyed, a tall receptacle of crystal clear water ready for the master's return. Just as it had every night since. After the frantic struggle to breathe, the old man was always thirsty.

Pater lapped awkwardly at his glass, the lukewarm liquid spilling down his chin. Its tepid content helping to dispel the illusionary sensation of ice running through his veins.

"How…how long this time?" his voice croaked.

"By my chrono, Primaris, you have been away for 7.3 minutes longer than before. For a total of 42.7 minutes."

Pater glared at Meyer with a jaundiced eye. "I can calculate well enough, you idiot. I Know how long that makes." The ancient navigator mumbled a few more curses, many to do with his mastery of warp travel and the plotting of three dimensional trajectories, a few more about Meyer's questionable masculinity.

Meyer sighed. "My apologies, master."

"How is Remi handling the ship? That little grox pile has been pinning about taking over this ship for months. He thinks I don't hear him when I'm on the chair. Moron and imbeciles the lot of you." The Primaris practically leapt from his bed, dark Nostromo robes whipping about him. He was always possessed of a manic energy when he returned to the flesh.

The hairless junior rose from his seat, pulled his cowl over his features and watched as his master paced about his chamber. It brought to mind a voidsmen in a brothel after a long warp jaunt.

"Senioris Remi is doing admirably well, sir. He has yet to cause the ship any harm and we have jumped many times since departing the Beholder's vicinity, returning the persephonians to their home world, and heading to the rendez-vous with the _Son of Ultramar _and the _Chariot._

Pater, twitching as he gnawed at his nails, shivered at the thought. His bountiful energy and new gift worked well in the warp. Even better in the proximity of the raging storms. But as soon as they would arrived in the Koronus expanse for the repairs, they would be bound to the material plane for months. He would be cut off, weak, and ill. Just as he had been during each of the translations into the materium the ship had made.

"Is that a problem, Primaris?"

"No." Pater said belatedly. It was better no one knew about this new mutation. Meyer was already showing signs of anxiety and he was a navigator. There was no telling how the mundane might react. Pater would rather the captain remained unaware of his new mutation, or the House delegates for that matter. The ancient navigator knew very well what fate awaited the unstable. Nostromo's dark vaults loomed threateningly into Pater's near future. Perhaps he could strike a bargain with his dim witted subordinates. He could remain Primaris in name only, allow Remi is taste of power, and keep a tight leash on Meyer and his spineless whining.

Yes. That could work.

Pater affected the kindest, softest tone he could muster as he turned towards Meyer. "My dear boy, have I ever mentioned you remind me of my nephew Kirias? Such a good boy. Come, sit by my bedside for a moment and indulge an old fool's blathering."

Meyer stiffened immediately. Pater's sudden and uncharacteristic shift disturbed him, and although he didn't know where this was going, he didn't like it one bit.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Into the Breach:**_

_**Part 5**_

The _Semper Fidelis_ limped into Footfall's auspex range ahead of schedule. Sigismund was reviewing the collated damage reports including Sola's annotations. The weight in thrones needed for the repairs was enough to pay a planetary governor's ransom.

Luckily, if the vice factotum could be counted on for anything, it would be to cut down the costs by a considerable margin. A tech savvy facto was a blessing when negotiating with dock overseers. Especially when ordering bulk repairs.

The captain yawned loudly as his ready room announcer chimed. Discarding the latest sectional report, he kicked his feet up on his desk and pressed the rune granting access to his private work area. He already knew who his visitor was, and didn't relish the conversation to come.

As the doors slid open on well-oiled tracks, Remi Nostromo slithered into the ready room. His perfectly balanced steps sending a shiver down the captain's spine. With an exaggerated bow that no doubt hid his a snickering smile, the navigator broke the silence.

"I have come bearing gifts of peace."

Sigismund chortled at the thinly veiled sarcasm.

"If you're here to be congratulated on the speedy transit you navigated for us, you'll have to wait. There is at least a hundred other people I want to offer my thanks to first.

The navigator shook his head, the purposely placed hood bathing his upper features in shadow but allowing his expressive lips to sneer.

"How people find you charming, I will never understand." Remi sat himself in the guest chair uninvited, forcing the captain to drop his feet to address him, rather than lean in an unbecoming fashion.

"Can I help you, or are you here simply to annoy?"

"I come baring gifts of peace" he repeated.

"You said that the first already."

"You weren't listening, evidently."

Sigismund sighed with the all too familiar resignation he felt when speaking with the robed narcissist. He leaned forward in his seat, resting his arms against the cluttered desk.

"Get to it, Nostromo."

"I require your assistance in a matter of space and resource allocation."

The captain raised an eyebrow. "And Sola turned you down?"

"It was outside her purview." The captain raised an eyebrow. "Her words, not mine."

Well this didn't bode well. "Space aboard the ship I can understand, but doesn't your house take care of your expenses?"

Remi nodded softly, his unnatural grace making the motion a strangely fluid bob. "It is imperative the House does not meddle. As you can see, it puts me in a peculiar position. Hence my offer."

"The one you haven't made yet." Grumbled the suspicious captain.

"It's nothing you should concern yourself with. I just required a third of the infirmary space and a few items of medical nature. You wouldn't understand even if I explained."

The captain visibly bristled at the navigator's tone. "I have no need of you Nostromo. Know that. I can get you replaced for a more pliant navigator at any friendly dock. Like the one we are approaching as we speak.

Remi smiled arrogantly at the jabbing digit Sigismund flung his way. "None as pliant as I can become, for the favor, and the discretion I ask for. Everything beyond that is not worth your concern."

"Everything, and I mean everything that happens on this ship concerns me, Remi. I need you at your post, not messing around in a bio lab for Emperor knows what reason. Better yet, I need Pater at his post. How is he doing?"

"You would be better served relying on me instead of Pater, which is all I can say. I assure you my interest revolve purely around the _homo navigo _anatomy. So I reiterate, the favor and the discretion for my services."

Sigismund mused. He leaned back in his chair with equal parts suspicion and avarice. A slick deal was something he could understand. Remi was a skilled navigator, and his only true flaw was his pathological ego. If Sigismund had a guarantee of compliance and servitude, the Nostromo would become a powerful asset.

"What are we talking about here? Be specific."

A liquid roll of the navigator's shoulders alluded to hidden possibilities. "Without conflicting with the oaths I swore to House Nostromo, and my relative safety, the possibilities are endless." His insufferable smirk positively drooled with self-assurance. Remi knew the value of what he was offering.

"No more snide remarks? Punctual and dependable service? No more questioning my authority in front of the crew?" The finger was waggling again.

"That is the least of my potential, but if your limited mind can only envision so far, who am I to complain."

"Remi!"

The navigator smiled. "My apologies captain. One last jib for old time's sake." He held his hands up in mock surrender, the gesture like the rolling of the sea.

Sigismund eyed the navigator intently for a long moment, then folded his hands behind his head. "I'll think about it. Dismissed!"

Remi lifted himself from his seat and bowed, then slipped away silently. The captain chewed his tongue in contemplation. He rolled the devil's bargain in his mind until his eye caught the ivory scroll case resting at his desk's edge.

Its content had been carefully inscribed by the choir master's concordiast. The parchment contained the complex semiotics that formed the astropath's communication. They were pictures, sounds, and smells. Pictures worth a thousand word. All translated by the personal minder that soothed Potholemus' telepathic psyche. Sigismund slipped the thick missive from its vessel and unfurled it gently. It told an interesting tale, one the captain had asked to have forwarded to him immediately upon reception. The adventurous debonair barked a laugh as he read.

He knew those Persephonians still had fight in them, and now he was vindicated.

Augustus Trevin gazed out of the tall windows decorating the boudoir's walls. Thin crystal clear panes let the sun caress the velvet interior of the noble's sanctum. Where once they would have been architectural curiosities at best, the lavish curtains adorning their edge now reminded the recently recovered soldier that light, and life, could be extinguished at any instant with as little as the use of a rope.

His medical situation had demanded he be secluded from anything that could agitate the nerves, or infect his recently scrubbed skin of its ochre stain. He had been trapped in the darkness of his own manor, away from friends and family for weeks now. Away from the one he desperately wanted to see. Today, he would get the opportunity.

His stiff aristocratic apparel felt suffocating to say the least. The vest was tight even on his emaciated frame and the multiple layers of frills and puff insisted on blooming from his equally cinched long tailed jacket. He didn't even want to think of what the trousers were doing to his tender bits. Oh and by the Emperor they were itchy on his sensitive flesh. No, this simply didn't feel right anymore. Not after a soldier's life and the pragmatic need for utility.

The oaken creek of his chamber's double doors drew his attention away from the silly indulgences of his erstwhile social class. A young woman with fair skin curtsied elegantly despite her form-fitting bodice and hoop skirt. She had the fair skin of the Persephonian leisure class and all the manners of an heiress, but then again they all did. It was only after she spoke that he recognized her.

"You look worse than shit on a shingle Trevin."

"Della!"

The pair quickly embraced, an unseemly affair in their garments, and parted with the shy blush of juvenile romance. Despite the awkward silence, their hands never parted, held with discrete affection.

Trevin finally broke the series of embarrassed giggles. "Tell me it isn't true, you sold your family's estate to pay the rogue trader's fee?"

Josephine nodded with undue enthusiasm, then stepped back to clasp her silk gloved hands to her waist, the picture of a perfect lady. She had been warned exuberantly to avoid skin on skin contact and already felt the tinge of guilt for having hugged him, though neither of them had seemed to mind. Trevin's boyish good looks had hardened into a patricians, and despite the abrasive surgery to remove Kursk's micro sediments from his epidermis, she could still see the man she had left behind on that accursed world.

"When we left Kursk, events unfolded unlike anything we could have imagined." Della began to explore the room, compelled to observe the familiar stranger that stood before her. "The regiment was retired of course, sent back home with honors. For all Von Richter's folly, his planned worked. I hated him for it, but he got what he deserved in the end."

Della played with the curtains that lined the tall arching windows. She threw a glance over her bare shoulders, hoping that he would join her. She couldn't deny all the nights she had dreamed of him, what her heart had forced her to understand. In that last foolish sacrifice, he had made her fall in love. "But home wasn't the same. Not for us. Father passed away shortly after-"

"I'm sorry," Trevin offered. He walked up behind her, standing a respectable distance away now that old habits had reasserted themselves.

Della shook her head, her golden locks now free of their military braids. The light caught them in such a way, they appeared to be spun gold. "It's alright Gus. Father was ill even before we left. I never expected to return home myself. But here we are, you and I."

Trevin nodded, stepping closer to rest a gloved hand against the naked flesh of her shoulder. A hint of an old scar peered above the back of her bodice. It was a reminded, yet another in a long line, that they were no longer the aristocrats of a pleasure world. They were warriors of the Emperor, wolves in sheep's clothing.

The one-time captain turned into her companion's hand, burying her face against his chest to hide the tears that welled up in her eyes. Softly, no longer fighting the demands of etiquette, he wrapped his arms around her. It was not the impassioned lack of decorum of before, it was what felt right.

"I'm so sorry we left you behind Gus. I haven't forgiven myself. Twice I left you to die and still you came back. Still, you forgive me."

The lost soldier tutted playfully as he ran his hand in her long flowing hair. "We all have our failings," he said, mocking his magnanimous nature.

She thumped a fist against his breast for his levity. Unable to resist the smile that forced itself onto her soft pink lips.

"Besides, you gave up your entire fortune just to get a few lost souls home. It's the least I can do. How have you been faring."

Della brushed the tears from her eyes and looked up at the man who once was her junior, but who through the vagrancies of the warp and the toils of war, looked like a more rugged version of his elder brother. The similarity lit a guilty flame in her heart, for she had once been madly in love with the same brother he now resembled; a long, long time ago during a schola's summer. She looked away.

"With destitution? It's not as bad as you think. As the last living heir to the Della name, I have received endless proposals of marriage. It seems my breeding stock still holds some value."

"Oh."

"I haven't accepted any." she answered quickly after his disappointment. When the smile crept back into his eyes, so did hers. "I have been a guest of the Steld household. Siggurd won't step a foot in that house for some reason, so Laura has rented a small cottage in town for him. There's been a lot to do. So I should tell you."

She took a stepped back, only leaving the warmth of his embrace reluctantly. Trevin looked pained to let her go. It truly seemed like distance had made the heart grow fonder. A thousand unspoken confessions rode their every glances, every brush of their hands, and every held breath.

"You're a hero Augustus Trevin. Your story is already the talk of every socialite's affair on the planet. There is already talk of a new founding to carry the glorious Persephonian 1st's banner into battle. Every noble's son is defying their father and volunteering."

"They're mad," was all Trevin could say.

"Indeed. They have no idea of what war is like, but they won't be dissuaded and the munitorum has already started drafting plans. There's no going back. They have enough volunteers to fill three regiments already, but they lack seasoned officers."

The tired soldier shook his head. Not believing the foolishness he was hearing. His shoulders sagged as he found a seat in an overstuffed leather sofa. His return had signaled the death of thousands of Persephonian sons. "Why… Why are you telling me this?"

Della kneeled at his feet, the steel hoops in her dress making siting by his side impossible. "I have spoken with the others. Lancer, Merlot, Corvin, even Steld and Siggurd, the other Kursk survivors as well. They feel it, don't you?"

"We don't belong here," he whispered between the hands that hid his face.

"We don't belong here," she whispered back, a pained plea in her voice.

Trevin straightened up and nodded. He had known the truth the day he disembarked on his home soil again. As they were transported to their estates by the rogue trader's people, he had seen it in the prim aristocrats riding their clipped steeds, and in the eyes of his family when they behead the killer he had become. He would never belong here again.

"I won't serve under another fool." Trevin spat, accepting the truth finally. "I won't see our brothers bled dry for the advancement of a career officer. Never again, Della."

She nodded in emphatic agreement. "You won't have to. Not if you lead us."

Trevin blinked a few time, confusion writ broadly on his face. He was about to speak when Della interrupted him. "Do you think Colonel Lazarus was chosen for his mastery of strategy? He was awarded the commission by the planetary governor. His peers chose him. Our peers will chose us, and not because they want to get rid of us, but because we are the symbol that inspired their service. Don't you see? We can get you that command."

Still, the haggard veteran shook his head in refusal. "Not the general command of a theater. These appointments are made by the munitorum and they have a long list of bootlicking generals to shoehorn onto honest soldiers. Nothing we can do will give us that level of control, and it's filly frakkers like Von Richter that fed us to the grinder."

"In normal circumstance, yes." Della grinned. "You seemed to have made quite the impression on a personage of great wealth and influence. While you were recovering I received an offer that will solve all of our problems. All you have to do is answer me this, is this Sigismund Lucius a fool?"

Footfall was a singular port amongst its kind. Massive asteroids were chained to each other whose links were as tall and thick as the _Semper Fidelis_ herself. At its epicenter rose a statue of his most divine majesty the Emperor. Its mighty outstretches arms claimed the station and all its inhabitants as his domain, although the expanse's battle fleet – barely larger than that of a subsector in number- was the only enforcer of that tenuous claim.

Calling it a den of iniquity would be putting it lightly, as the last bastion of imperial might in the expanse, it was more akin to the cliff suicidal madmen jumped from. Beyond this point was endless peril in the shape of ancient xeno worlds, clusters of green skin infested planets, and competitive rogue traders and their piratical equivalent; not to mention the occasional chaos warships still fighting the long war, the warps innate tendency to murder folks riding its tide, and real space anomalies that could rend a ship asunder.

All the same it was like a second home to the crew of the _Semper Fidelis_. Although the voidsmen were as likely to find entertainment as get knifed in what passed as dark alleys in the void station, the men went on their merry way. They were armed to the teeth and overly willing to shoot off a few shots of whatever it was they were gripping in their hands at the moment. Sola Villanueva knew the station all too well and despised walking its decks, and for good reason.

Before Sigismund had picked her up from its moorings she had been doomed to the waifish life of a port whore. It was incredibly telling that the man who had first accosted her for a seedy time had instead gleam her profound potential. He also had never spoken about how they met to another living soul, giving her the chance to work up to her present position in less than a year, and this prejudice free.

Her meteoric rise had come at the expense of her blood and sweat. This much she knew, and she was about to display the same kind of grit and skill that had gotten her to where she was when she noticed something awry. Remi and Meyer Nostromo were exiting a boarding concourse with a handful of their House guards. Needless to say they stuck out like sore thumbs, and despite the veritable arsenal their guards carried, it was bound to cause them trouble. Footfall ate chumps like them for breakfast.

Without having missed a single lie spewed by the dock overseer, all designed to mark up the prices of the repairs, she highlighted a few lines on her data slate and slammed it against his lardy gut.

"This is what I'm paying, and this is why, now if you will excuse me."

Sola set off after the navigators, leaving the porcine overseer to read her data slate. She was barely down the gantry stairs when she heard the man mutter colorful curses. Few could argue with the logic she had honed at the feet of the priests of mars. Though it was knowledge from another life, it served her well in this one.

"You're sure we won't get in trouble for this?" asked Meyer in his usual anxious tone. The navigators cluttered conspiratorially at the entrance of the main thoroughfare of this particular asteroid station. A throng of void born, some slightly mutated humans, and even a few freakishly disturbing xenos walked them by.

"Of course not, no one is going to notice. I'm ready to wager we could even pay them and they would happily follow us to the ship." Answered Remi, already bored of this little expedition into the heart of plebian life. "Or we cut the middle man and just hit one over the head."

Remi was utterly serious. He signaled a House guard towards a colorfully, and provocatively dressed woman. As the burly carapace wearing enforcer began to move in for the kill Meyer draped himself over the grunt's arm.

"Wait, no, no, no. Here comes Sola!"

"What are you two up to?" came the matronly tone of the vice factotum. If anyone had dared walk between the guards as she had, they would have been beaten to a paste and then shot repetitively for good measure. Fortunately for Sola, she was on very good terms with the resident navigators and the House guards had been permanently ordered to allow her existence to persist.

"Hello..." smiled Meyer, quickly abandoning the house guard's arm and stretching casually. His attempts at normalcy was more incriminating than a smoking gun.

"Really?" Sola's eyes questioned without a hint of belief.

Remi rolled his eyes. "We are here to collect samples."

"What kind of samples?"

"Absolutely normal samples Sola, nothing weird, I promise." Meyer Interrupted.

"Then you'd be lying Meyer, you wouldn't want to be lying to me now, would you?" Sola knuckled her fists into her hips, squaring herself as she scolded the hairless navigator.

"No, I wouldn't. Sorry, Sola." As Meyer stared at his feet, Sola turned her attention towards Remi. He simply smirked at her, amused at her attempts at mothering him.

"We secured the use of a section of the infirmary, just as I had requested of you. I need some base samples to compare to navigator samples, so as to track the advance and growth of mutational markers. Somehow, Meyer feels it is shameful to ask for the odd sputum, hair, and skin sample from the denizens of this filthy hovel."

The vice factotum's gaze slipped from Remi to Meyer, then to their guards whose mirrored visor unfortunately didn't help her attempts at scrutiny. Although of an altogether disturbing nature, their request was in all honestly valid. She knew well of Remi's genetor interests and they often exchanged ideas in their long drawn out discussions, ranging from xeno-archeology to nascent machine communion. The pair shared between them an eclectic mix of scholarly disciplines, but few aboard the ship were as equally matched as Remi and Sola in raw intellectual power, so it was only natural they had gravitated towards each other.

"Well, then, you're doing it all wrong." Muttered Sola as she abandoned hope of telling truth from fiction, if one even existed. "You have to speak their language." Sola took Remi's necklace, its thick gold segments exquisitely carved, and forced the delicate clasps until each segment came apart. Then, she whistled at a passerby.

"Hey honey, want to earn yourself an easy payday?" A flamboyantly dressed courtesan stopped dead in her tracks, as did many others lounging against a nearby wall, they looked at the offered bounty. She walker by pointed at herself to make sure she had been the one addressed.

"Easiest trick you'll ever pull," winked Sola, as the two navigators became the object of the courtesan's attention. Remi sneered as if the prospect of the pleasure girl's touch would be worse than catching the rot, while Meyer blushed frantically and practically disappeared within the folds of his robes.

Footfall could water any man's thirst, and after a month in dry dock Sigismund was parched. This nearly abandon segment of the station's multiple rocks was home to one of the cruelest sport within a sector's distance. The seediest and most violent of psychopaths came to enjoy the show, or moderately adventurous rogue traders. In a station filled to the brim with free spirited souls, men and woman who would be branded as heretics and blasphemers within the confines of imperial space, this was the bad part of town.

Just the kind of place to feel alive, though Sigismund. The captain, now dressed in his lowly smuggler's getup elbowed his way through the crowd that clung to the steel mesh fence separating the spectators from the dead and the dying.

At the center, xenos and men alike fought to the death for wagers and pleasure. Fat smoke curled from Sigismund's lit cheroot as he watched the show. All around him the crowd was wild, climbing the fence- which in truth wouldn't stand a chance of holding back any of the fighters in the ring had they the inclination to leave- and pressing against each other in a mad revel of adrenaline and intoxicants.

The crowd roared as a fountain of blood jetted into the air. A scarred thug had just lost his head to the broad swipe of a xeno creature. Its tall lanky avian features and crest full of quills narrowed its species down for the seasoned captain. It was definitely a kroot. Those wiry bastards had been making quite an impact in the expanse these last few years. They had come out of nowhere, but quickly made a reputation for themselves as able warriors, loyal mercenaries, and unashamed cannibals.

The thug's body hadn't hit the floor that the kroot vaulted up the steel fence cage with the headless corpse and began digging its beak into its meat. Below it, the contest continued between an impossibly fast polearm wielding fighter and the underdog of the match, a clumsy looking ork nob with a makeshift axe.

Between the two fighters, several bodies lay dead on the cold metal deck. The shadows from the vast ventilator systems above them flicked over the gunmetal grey surface as the tension rose. Knuckles had played his role well, not that it was hard to convince someone that an ork was dumb. With a few easy cues to remember, the ork had circled his opponents until he could see Sigs clutching the fence. Depending on the number of fingers he looped around the links, Knuckles would change his tactics. He hadn't really needed his captain's help yet, but these two last gits were giving him a run for his teef.

It was time to play it smart, like da boss had said. There, between ducking the flashing blade coming at his neck and taking a few nicks around his midriff, he had spotted four fingers. That meant "bugs". The thing would supposedly spit acid at him or come in close and chew at his vitals, he should to grab it as it vaulted and crush it. Or he could throw his axe at it. But the stick man didn't look very buggy to Knuckles.

The blitzer came at knuckles again, sliding into his charge to effortlessly let Knuckles' axe fly over him. As the fighter slid past, he spun his bladed polearm above his head with blinding speed. The result was another half a dozen cuts along and behind Knuckles' knee. The large ork came crashing down on his wounded knee as muscle and ligaments were shorn from his thick bones.

Knuckles roared in anger and pain, his sight glazing as he heard the war drums of Gok and Mork. The roar however, has snapped the kroot's attention back onto the match. He let his meal drop in a splattering mess and pounced from the fence towards the stricken Knuckles. The blitzer hung back with a cruel smile.

Sigismund was practically climbing the fence himself, screaming "three" over and over again, much to the confusion on his neighbor. Knuckles nodded then, eldar; that made more sense. Fast, but can't take a hit. Draw it in and grab it, nothing more to it after that. But first he had to deal with the birdman. Boss didn't have much to say about him.

The kroot was falling fast on Knuckles with its beak clicking and squawking excitedly. Its arc was going to land it on the orks wide shoulders where it could wreak havoc without him being able to dislodge it. Knuckles would be completely helpless then. The eldar would not miss that opportunity. So the ork did the only thing it knew how to, it took the hit and fought fire with fire.

As the carnivorous kroot latched onto Knuckles' back and started to gouge at his neck- screeching something about how good it would be to have his strength- the eldar burst forward with his bladed polearm. The besieged ork wrapped his thick mitts around the kroot's head, its beak pulling apart stringy meat slick with orkoid blood, and pulled him over his shoulder to take the brunt of the elder's skewering thrust.

With the kroot as improvised body armor, which convulsed in its death throes and trapped the eldar weapon, Knuckle's lunged forward on his useless knee and managed to grip the stickman's surprised face before it could let go of its weapon and dance back out of range.

It was over the moment the three fighters it the floor. The kroot, was skewered and stiff. The eldar, had its head smashed into paste against the cold metal deck. And Knuckles, was slowly extricating himself from the kroot and polearm combination while trying to clasp a hand over a cascading neck wound.

"TIE!" called the pit manager atop his Aquila stamped cargo crate. The crowd roared back at him. With the underdog winning, the manager stood to lose too much, and so he quickly called for a nullifications of the bets. Not many agreed with him. Least of all Sigismund who had bet a few thousand thrones worth on Knuckles, for obvious reasons.

"Gak off! You know full well the ork isn't down. He's taking a nap at best. They don't die easy. He clearly won!" yelled Sigismund.

"Shut your mouth filth! I call the matches not you."

"Pit's fixed, I bet. That's why he won't pay up!" the captain told the crowd. The mere hint of a fixed game would send most crowd crazy. The manager knew it as well and resolve to get rid of the trouble maker before things got out of hands. He signaled a few heavies to go give Sigismund a thrashing.

At the sight of the heavies, tough enough to be fighting in the ring themselves, the crowd parted until it was only Sigismund with his back against the fence. Suddenly, the bruisers backed off with a look of genuine terror. Sigismund was plunged in Knuckles' not inconsiderable shadow as he pulled himself up straight with the help of the steel fence's links.

"Did we win, boss?" asked Knuckles, his eyes lolling in his skull and his flesh a slight shade of green lighter than usual. Murderous glances were starting to get thrown around now.

The captain looked over his shoulder, the ork inadvertently bleeding down onto his bullet holed jacket. "What did I tell you about asking that question in public?" he growled between clench teeth.

The pit manager's eyes bulged with accusations. "Who's fixing the game now, huh? We don't take kindly to your kind around here." Around Sigismund and Knuckles, the heavies closed in with the crowd's support, having finally decided it was high time to teach someone a lesson.

"Funny you should say that," Sigismund chuckled nervously, as he thumbed his holster's restraint loose. "Those were the exact words you used the last time I was here."

Hubert and Sigismund were having a drink in the quaintly named officer's lounge. The room boasted a pair of sofa chairs and a sturdy metal table bolted to the deck. Between the two, it would have been a chore to fit anyone else in the room, which made it easy to see what kind of mood Sola was in when she walked into the lounge.

"Here she comes," Hubert mumbled into his cup as he shared a sideways glance at his companion.

"I have had it up to here with all this crap! Barely a month and a half in dry dock and you lot are making my life a living hell." Sola thumped her hands on the table with the intensity of a warlord titan takes a leisurely stroll. "And you Sigs, you're the worst! Teleporting, really? Were you too lazy to walk the three kilometers it took to get back to the ship?"

"I was in a tight spot." Sigismund was trying desperately not to grin, and failing that, decided to throw a distraction the vice factotum's way. "Nice earrings by the way, new?"

"Yes, thank you." Sola answered without missing a beat. "Your stunt burned out half a dozen capacitors in the teleport chamber, not to mention sending the adepts manning the archeo-tech wonder into a binaric rant which my cogitator has yet to finish processing!"

Sola sat on the edge of the table with an exasperated sigh.

The angle made Sigismund's eyes wander, and Hubert quietly chastised his long time ward by clearing his throat and shaking his head discreetly. "Listen, I'm sorry, dry dock is boring, the crew is bound to act up."

"Not the crew Sigs, you!"

"What Siggy is saying dear, is that he apologizes for making your workload heavier, promises to behave, and offers you an all-expense paid shore leave at the port of your choice."

"Amazingly, that's exactly what I meant."

Sola scrutinized the pair silently as she reached down to grasp Sigismund's drink and finished it in one gulp. She hissed threateningly as the heat died down in her throat. Why was it every time they docked she had to babysit a ship full of madmen?

"Swear to me Sigs, no more!"

The captain took his tricorne hat from the table and covered his heart in a solemn pledge. "On my honor."

Sola finally nodded, taking her lithe body off the table's edge and burrowing into Sigismund's soul with her glare. "And if you ever take advantage of the Omnissiah's blessings again, I will end you, son of Lucius."

The pair watched the factotum walk away. Sigismund slumped down in his seat and refilled his companion's drinks. "It a good thing she didn't find that burned out homing harness I used up in the process, pretty sure that was one of a kind."

The old steward shook his head before sipping on his whiskey. "There will come a day when these games of yours will have to end Siggy. Anthonid can't rule forever."

Sigismund groaned and slid his hat over his features. "I know."

"You have responsibilities, and although you have stretched this captaincy far longer than any scion ever has, your time is short."

"Must you kill the moment with talk of dynasty affairs, Hubert? My father got rid of me decades ago. This is where I belong, onboard the _Semper Fidelis_."

The pain in the old steward's eyes was plain to see, had Sigismund deigned to stop hiding his face like a spoiled schola boy. "If that were true, Evangeline would not be here training as your replacement."

The man-child stirred at that reminder, causing Hubert to rub the sting from his eyes and hide the truth. He had raised Sigismund like a father. From those early years to well within his adult years. Hubert had done what Anthonid should have, and he could never tell Sigismund why.

Sigismund disguised his fear with levity, as he always did. "If I have to sit around a sand pit wrapped in a bed sheet for the rest of my days, I'd rather fly this warhorse into the sun."

"And that's the problem," grumbled the steward as he forced himself to stand. "You'd kill us all just to run away from your destiny." Hubert's mood had chilled from the friendly drinking partner he had been before Sola's interruption. Before his thoughts had fallen to melancholy. "One minute you are a worthy commander, a man the entire ship would follow into battle no matter the odds. The next, you are a spoiled scion with a swollen sack and too little sense to take seriously."

As Hubert walked away, never turning back to say goodnight, Sigismund was left to wallow in his seat. His uncle's words still ringing in his ears. To be the scion the dynasty needed, he had to sacrifice the man he was. He raised his glass high in salutation to no one and to nothing.

"To lineage, dynasty, and the _Semper Fidelis_. May the last never fail me like the first!"

Meyer was not entirely sure his prospects had bettered under Remi's patronage. Clearly, he was still onboard a void ship, which means he at least had that going for him. The House Nostromo estate on footfall still remained blissfully unaware of his immediate uselessness as a navigator. On the other hand, he was now running both Pater and Remi's errands every moment of the day.

True, Pater was a lot less demanding when he lingered in a vegetative state. But that only caused Meyer to spend all of his free time in the new laboratorum taking care of the samples. As he tightened the ball gag in the mouth of the latest void scum to have been collected by the House guards, he grumbled at his unfortunate fate.

The void scum drooled under the influence of the narcotics he had been dosed with. Though Sola's method of sample gathering had proven successful, Remi had insisted they acquired live subjects to experiment on during transits and when far from possible harvesting locations. The last few weeks had been nerve wracking for Meyer as he crossed path with Sola on a daily basis. He imagined she would not approve of this last initiative on the part of the navigators. Perhaps if he focused on his shuffling feet as they crossed path he could maintain the illusion of innocence.

Meyer marked off a few items on his charts and prepared the equipment he would use to keep the subjects fed and hydrated while he monitored their vitals. If the last few rounds of trials were anything to go by, the subjects would start showing signs of the mutagenic pumped into their veins within a few days. By then, they would already be in the warp and heading to the flotilla.

Meyer was entirely overworked, it was unacceptable to treat someone like this. He would have to take it up with Remi. Though that promised to be an exercise in futility. As he stabbed the long needles into the void scum's flesh, the man gurgled and rolled his eyes. The morphia haze was thick in the subject's eyes and after making sure he hadn't jabbed the wrong probe into the wrong organ, Meyer checked a few other boxes on his chart.

The hairless navigator sighed, moving his limbs and allowing the veiny patagia between them to shed some of their accumulated heat. He looked over at the dozen of subjects tied safely into their cradles, fed intravenous life. Yes, he concluded, his lot was indeed wretched.

Restocked and refueled, the _Semper Fidelis_ left the comforts of Footfall and moved out into the dark inky void before letting its warp engines rip a wound into reality. With a newly calibrated navigation throne, Remi guided the ship into the sector of the expanse known as the Ragged Worlds, somewhere between the tomb world of Redemption and the fetid predator filled jungles of Burnscour. These were the coordinated the astropaths had received from the Lord Dynast himself. It was no difficult feat of navigation and the voyage had been swift and uneventful.

Days before they would reach their destination in real space, the auspex and etheric vanes flexed and hummed, finding and communicating with the _Son of Ultramar_ and the _Chariot_. As the warship returned to the fold, its captain left the bridge to its ever improving first officer. His younger half-sister having blossomed into a fine commander, Hubert's words echoed in his mind. His tenure as the master of this magnificent ship was coming to an end. The thought made him morose, and few dared to approach him.

The _Semper Fidelis_ glided along in the strange system, through its sporadic ice and asteroid fields, its dancing gaseous clouds, and past the pregnant ice moon orbiting the sapphire blue and verdant green world which the flotilla orbited. Much to Remi's frustration and Sigismund's suspicion, the world was unmarked on any imperial charts aboard the warship. It stank of colonial implications.

A senatorum session was called, as Sigismund knew it would be following the reunion of the dynasty's assets. All first tier officers were required to attendant, a small entourage of second tier officers often following their masters but denied the right to cast their ballots outside of referendum. The senatorum was a web in which political maneuvering and half-truth were the currency. It also decided the fate of the entire flotilla, a long standing tradition dating millennia, in which the Lord Dynast held the all mighty power of veto. It was ancient, inefficient, and sycophantic. At least to Sigismund's opinion.

The shuttle flight over to the gloriously appointed and spacious cruiser was a silent and chilly affair. Sigismund as Lord Captain, Sola as Vice Factotum, and Scartus as Enginseer Prime were required to attend to represent command, finance, and tech matters. Remi and Keever were dragged along. The first to help explain the Beholder's effect on the warp and Keever for bodily protection. Hubert had never been asked to join a session in Sigismund's lifetime, nor had he ever asked. Just another blatant mystery held to his face but never explained. Sigismund would be called to report the events of the last year away, and although no murder had ever been committed during a session of the senatorum, more than one scandalous personage had fallen prey to competitors both before and after. It promised to be especially grueling.

Where the _Semper Fidelis_ was a practical ship with no eye for nonsense, the _Son of Ultramar _was a very different beast. Over the centuries, the planetary bombardment cruiser had been turned into a palace of marble, vaulted ceilings, and gratuitous ostentation and leisure. Its recycled air perfumed, its vast melodium filled with performances of art and music, its galleries filled with the wares of a hundred different exotic world, its coliseum the site of tasteful martial displays. To Sigismund, everything that was wrong with his father's dynasty was embodied in his ship. A once proud warship, capable of laying waste to entire worlds, now traveling the expanse at the pleasure of wealthy oligarchs and bored aristocrats. It was a glorified cruise ship.

Sigismund grit his teeth as his blood simmered. Now in the senatorum proper, designed to emulate antiquated estates from their long ago home world of Tallisar, he shed his daily attire to dress in the fashion of the wise lords of the flotilla. All painfully dictated by decorum and enforced by, yet again, more tradition. He donned the leather cuirass of the heir, a shadow of the one his father would wear; the silver laurel to his father's gold, the thick toga with its intricately decorated hem of gilded trims and martial reds. Everything from the the speed of his steps to the the posture he adopted would be proscribed by tradition. As his ancestors had, and as his descendants would.

As the would-be prince walked the corridors of white plaster walls, lit by flames ensconced in blackened iron every tenth meter, he was joined by his officers. They arrived as a stately proceeding into to the inner courtyard where the elders waited. Sigismund's fellows would have made a thousand minute errors by now, for they had not been born to mimic the hundreds of generations that preceded them. But it did not matter. All eyes were on him, judging him, seeking flaws. He would not give them the pleasure.

"All salute the heir of the Lucius dynasty, first born son of the lion, the prince returns"

Sigismund bowed elegantly as the room shuffled to its feet and applauded with no real passion, playing out the roles they had been assigned. Behind him, the crew of the S_emper Fidelis_, swathed in robes with trims demarking their positions and roles, walked down the few steps that brought them to their places around the sand pit of the orators.

"My son, it warms my heart to see you returned." Anthonid rose from his Romani styled consul's seat, draped as it was in the pelt of an enormous golden furred feline, and walked his sandaled feet into the sand pit to embrace Sigismund. The gesture felt empty to his son, as it had every time before. After the ceremonial embrace, each took their appointed places around the pit.

A series of greetings and thanks were expressed by various elders of the senatorum, patting each other's back shamelessly. They recounted their labors and trades, comparing their profits for the dynasty with not-so-friendly banter. Across the pit, a distinguished woman adorned of a bronze kolpos over her white chiton glared at Sigismund. A single strand of silver, too perfect to be brought on by age, snaked into the tightly knotted bun slanting off her head. The heir nodded to his sister, captain of the chariot, forever keeper of its most precious cargo, the Lady Dynast, wife to Anthonid, second of her kind, mother to their half sibling Evangeline.

Had she been born with a cock, she would be heir instead of Sigismund, and she deeply despised that fact. Her accounts were short and to the point compared to the other senators, her vice-factotum concisely reading off the contents of the cargo hauler and finishing with the traditional, "and the lady, shining light of the dynasty, is well."

"It warms my heart,' came the traditional reply from her husband. It probably would warm it considerably more if he visited her more than once a year, thought Sigismund, then again the dynast was so old his seed hadn't taken hold once in the two decades since Evangeline's birth. Give or take a few years.

"Now for the account of Lord Captain Sigismund Lucius, defender of the dynasty, heir to the charter, first born son of the lion." The orator introduced Sigismund with a flourish and stepped out of the sands. With a carefully measured pace, Sigismund rose from his seat and took center stage in the sand pit. He raised his arms wide, his trailing robe's tail rising with it, and purred with the most honeyed tone he could muster. It would take much embellishment to transform his latest endeavor into something palpable to the senatorum. But with Sola and Remi backing him up, and Emperor provides a kind word or two from Scartus, he might win them over yet.

"That was most impressive Sigismund," the dynast said as he walked privately with his son towards the observation deck. "You have a good crew, loyal friends, and a way with words." Sigismund walked silently beside his father, dutiful and poised as was required of him, but dying a little inside with every step. His father continued speaking. "How you managed to turn it into a moral victory, despite half the _Semper Fidelis_ being in pieces and a costly detour to Persephonia, was especially impressive."

Sigismund caught himself hoping for the impossible. "I'm proud of you, _son_" had been words waited on for nearly thirty years now. "Glory over pennies," Sigismund simply said.

"I suppose men crave glory, even onto the grave. Keen of you to use that vulnerability against them." The old man nodded to himself, as if coming to a conclusion. "You should speak with Lucretia. You two have drifted further apart with the years. I don't want my children fighting over this dynasty when I pass."

This was different. Anthonid had never mentioned his mortality before. "There won't be a fight, father. Tradition binds this dynasty more than its need for wealth. I couldn't give her my future even if I tried. The senatorum would never advance the motion, and as dynast, I couldn't advance _any_ motions."

"True, Sigismund, but if mortal men can turn against their divine Emperor, then they certainly could break a few rules here. Tradition does not carry the day, it only supports institution. Men, strong men, carry the day." The old man was definitely up to something. Sigismund could feel it. Something was about to happen and it would cause rifts.

"Not to worry father. You will live to marry at least three more wives."

Anthonid grunted softly, ignoring that subject. "It's a beautiful world isn't it?" the dynast nodded in the floating sphere's direction. Sigismund spared it a glance. "I'll call it Ultra Primaris, I think." Anthonid mumbled more to himself than his son.

"Colonies require incredible investment, it ties you down. It's not worth the risk. Not a single Rogue Trader found his fame that way, not unless you count all the satirical and ironic titles we give the worlds they died on." Reminded his son.

"You have to put down roots someday, Sigismund. You can't go off rushing after adventure every moment of your life. It does not end well, and mark my words, it won't end well for you either." The Dynast Lord pushed himself away from the glimmering sapphire beyond his observation port and walked away. His last words a command more than a suggestion.

"And go see your sister before she leaves my ship."

Nothing ever happened by chance. Not truly. Sigismund might believe in divine intervention from time to time, but this wasn't it. This was his father's doing, writ large. Anthonid never had faith in his people. He would plan, manipulate, manoeuver, and then force his interest on others. Classic senatorum business. One hand cajoling while the other wields a big stick.

"I'm going to be a few minutes," Sigismund called over his shoulder. Behind him, his entourage was embarking on the Aquila lander that would take them back to the _Semper Fidelis_. Only it wasn't fueled up yet and his pilot had mysteriously disappeared. Sigismund had a feeling he wouldn't be seeing him anytime soon unless he took the hint. Which in this case was the conveniently close proximity of Lucretia's own shuttle, mysteriously stricken by a lack of hangar attendants as well.

Holding his tricorne hat in place, Sigismund ducked and hurried over to his neighboring sibling. The habit was totally unnecessary but years of rapid embarkation under fire had made it a comically reoccurring reflex, and the busy hangar had sparked it here again.

"What in the blazing nether are you doing?" Lucretia's stern voice rang as he straightened up by her side. She was standing at the foot of her embarkation ramp with arms crossed. Evidently annoyed at the strange delay.

"Sorry, old wartime habit." Answered Sigismund and he dusted off his buccaneer's coat to mitigate his embarrassment. "The old man wanted us to have a chat before we part ways for another year or so."

"Is this why the fueling servitor decided to malfunction?" she cursed angrily.

"More likely than not." Sigismund waved a greeting at Lucretia's entourage inside the shuttle. No one returned the favor. "He thinks we are drifting apart."

"Why is that?" she mocked, staring him down meaningfully. "Because my idiot brother is gallivanting across the galaxy while I'm stuck following in father's wake, like a dutiful bag servant? Or is it perhaps because a ridiculous tradition made a dangling a piece of meat between your legs a prerequisite for dynastic leadership, denying me a charter I am clearly more suited to exploit?"

"I missed our talks Lu," smiled Sigismund insincerely.

"Don't call me that." She growled.

"Listen, how about we do this. Chances are the old peeping pervert has a pic thief aimed at us at the moment. Smile, lets hug and kiss, and I bet you our shuttles will be ready in the next ten minutes."

Lucretia turned to her brother, as if she had just now realized he was a long lost relative returned from the dead. They quickly embraced, easy smiles and candid laughter ringing between them. After a few more minutes of empty conversation the siblings parted and Sigismund quickly ran up the ramp of his shuttle, Sola and Remi at its end.

"What the hell was that?" asked Sola as Sigismund settled himself in a grav-couch.

"Just a display of sibling affection to get the old man of my back."

"Oh," said Sola. "He is never going to believe that. I could see how fake it was from all the way over here."

"Yes," added Remi, "I have seen grox with more acting talent than that."

"Thank you Remi, that will be all."

Remi nodded and secured himself in his own harness. "Aye-Aye captain."

Moments after, the ship's pilot walked between the grav rows with the look of a man just released from a deep dark cell and told to get on with it. He gave the captain a salute and hurried to the cockpit.

"You were saying?" Sigismund smiled smugly at Sola.

The vice factotum frowned, nestling herself comfortably for the coming flight. "The man has kept a rogue trader dynasty together, despite its inherent organizational flaws, for over a century Sigs. If anything, he's only _making_ you think you fool him."

Sigismund's smug grin slowly melted away. He cursed, than grumbled to himself. "Things are so much easier with Knuckles."

Aboard the_ Chariot_, Lord Captain Lucretia Lucius made her way to the beach. The cargo hauler was a cumbersome ship, and so it could not reasonably be expected to be very fast or maneuverable. It was not a powerful ship either, barely equipped with enough missile batteries to put up the pretense of a fight. But the _Chariot_ was her ship, and she was a masterpiece in deceit. Her halls shifted and moved, denying intruders passage and speeding legitimate defender's efforts. These strange creations were more generally called Tenebro Mazes, and were ruled by incalculably complex machine spirits. Hidden in its walls and decks were death servitors, mechanical hunters of incredibly lethal potential, and with the majority of the crew servitors, simply registering a life sign was the beginning and the end of a boarding action.

And if by any chance an intruder managed to survive the _Chariot_'s traps, a dedicated defense battalion clad in light power armor and armed with mighty bolt guns were ready to die in the service of the Lady Dynast. This all female elite guard cadre were aptly named the Virgin Guard, and were heavily inspired by the ecclisiarchy's Sisters Sororitas once witness in battle by Juno Lucius, a dynast eight hundred years dead.

These contingencies had been generally unnecessary for many decades now. Ever since a xeno shadow drive had been installed in the _Chariot_'s iron bones, she had remained undetected and unmolested. Lucretia appreciated her ship's illusionary passivity. She was a plumb cargo ship begging to be boarded, and so immensely murderous when she was. It was a visceral pleasure its captain tease from her design, one of the very few this life offered her misbegotten gender.

Svelte figures in power armour banged their bolt gun to their embossed chest in salute as Lucretia entered the inner sanctum of the Lady Dynast. Here, the ship changed dramatically, but was no any less deceitful for it. Miraculous hololithic technologies had been used to transform the heart of the ship into a paradise vista. Soft blue skies moved lazily under an immaculately artificed breeze. The sound of a salty ocean lapping against the pristine white sands echoed all around, and there, by its slovenly curves, was a classically built beach estate, much like the senatorum in design.

Lucretia was scrutinized by a few more zealous virgin guards before being allowed into the presence of the Lady Dynast. A strange dichotomy ruled this artificial world. Outside its bulkheads Lucretia was mistress of the ship, second only to the Emperor and her Father in power. But within this gilded cage, she was a servant before a queen. And like a servant, she kneeled.

"Rise daughter of my husband. How was your visit in his presence?" Lucretia rose as commanded and smiled politely at the once feudal world princess, turned Hellenic beauty, and now fading fast against the encroachment of the years. No rejuvenat treatments for the lady-wives. Once their biological clock stopped ticking, they were of no further use to the dynasty. Despite this, she stood majestically at the center of the room, its marble floors tracing patterns that exclaimed her exaltedness, and commanding Lucretia's respect.

"As was expected. Old men fondling each other for the pleasure of your husband. The most achingly evident of them being my buffoon of a brother."

The Lady Dynast nodded to herself, brushing her hands against the pure white peplos she wore over her seemingly barren womb. Hers was a delicate position, as she had come to learn. She was a prized pet whose ascension from the filthy rabble of her world, a world held in the grip of eternal war to win the favor of a distant patron, bound her to the sole duty of bearing heirs for a millennia old dynasty. A duty she had not been able to perform in the many years her youth had turn to dust.

Although the fault laid most assuredly in the frail nature of her husband's seed, a man whose life had been prolonged so long that he was legend even before she was born, women forever carried the blame. It signaled for her a dismal fate, no doubt to be discarded or murdered in her sleep by dynast sycophants, so that a younger woman could be hoisted up to the stars by her ignorant people in replacement. She needed to strike, even if only in defense. The clans of the plains she was born into never gave in to life's misfortune. They fought tooth and nail against fate. So would she.

"With my brother commanding the _Semper Fidelis_ like an eternal bachelor, I doubt your daughter will ever be given command. Something needs to happen," pressed Lucretia.

The Lady Dynast sighed. Her husband's first children had been born from a Ravenkin of the grey mountains. They were slick, devious, and fickle as a rule. Echoes of those family ties tainted the words Lucretia spoke now.

"You would have your brother killed?" quested the lady from the plains.

"Emperor no! I meant… his command must be taken from him. His incompetence shown in the light of day for all to see. He is… an unworthy heir." Lucretia was clearly agitated. She paced back and forth politely keeping her gaze low.

It was good that Lucretia balked at murdering her sibling. The fate of her daughter would have been in peril if it were any other way. "A woman needs to lead this dynasty."

"Yes." Lucretia agreed. "But how can we make this wretched patriarchy see the strength a woman possess?"

"A Lucius woman…" fed the lady dynast.

"Yes, a woman born of the Lucius blood. Those blind traditionalist dogs might refuse a woman's rule. But they will not deny the potency of the dynasty's blood, of its roots in Ultramar and Tallasar. They fawn over heroes like awed children. Yes, we just need a heroine worthy of the dynasty."

The Lady Dynast embraced Lucretia and softly kissed her lips, a sign of sisterly affection. "Go Lucretia, save this dynasty from the foolishness of men."

Lucretia started, breath stolen by the intimacy of the kiss. She stepped back and bowed, taking the blessing of the Lady Dynast with her.

Zenobia smiled sincerely for the first time since her angel's birth. How she missed her so. She adjusted her shawl and covered her head as she left the beach house to dip her feet into the waters of the artificial sea. How false her joy would have been if she understood the mistake she had made.

Where Zenobia thought only of her child, Evangeline, Lucretia thought only of her stolen birthright.


	6. Chapter 6

_**Into the Breach:**_

_**Part 6**_

The onlookers nestled comfortably amongst the flora surrounding them. They gazed silently at the growing malignancy on the horizon. Their sharp senses picking up enough to tell them what they needed to know despite the lack of visual aids. Creatures milled around them oblivious to their presence, or intuitively recognizing they posed no threat. The soft summer breeze complimented the crystal blue skies in what could only be described as a perfect day in paradise. Their paradise.

"They taint our world," said one of the cloaked onlooker.

"I know," replied the still one in their midst.

"Within a generation, they will have despoiled her beauty and ravaged her bones," added another with sadness.

"I know," answered the still one.

The onlookers shifted beneath their cloaks, the very colors of the surrounding bush melding with them imperceivably. A small furred rodent nimbly climbed up a cloaked ghost, mistaking him for the tree it sought to scale.

"We must act," declared the first who had voiced their mutual concern. He slid his hand along the bone white length of his long barreled weapon as he stood. His peers taking a more active stance. Their people spoke in a thousand inflections, with voice as well as body, every small gesture and pose adding nuance to a song-like language lost to all but the most ancient of species. Their keening minds echoed the same revulsion and anger which their leader felt, yet he remained impassively still, and hard to read, even for his empathic companions.

"I know," he chimed softly, his melodic utterance the softest of silks. "We will tell the others. Be fleet of foot and ever shadows, my brothers. Observe and delay. I will return with Kurnous' anger in tow."

The ghosts nodded their farewell. "May you find the path Elamnyl."

Their leader nodded back, by the time his cowl had been readjusted his companions were gone without a trace.

The foolish imperials would soon rue the day they had stomped their filthy boots upon a maiden world.

Sola carefully logged the shuttle's numerals as it landed on the makeshift pad the techpriests had insisted on laying on the empty plain. Its use was utterly redundant but the rites were unquestionable and the Arvus lighter's machine spirit would be unsettled were it to land on the soft soil of the grassy plain. Sola could appreciate that. Expediency and ignorance often led to the mistreatment of vital machinery, much to the Omnissiah's displeasure. When it came to the cult, she and it were often of the same mind, for obvious reasons.

The tired pilot lowered the cargo ramp. This was his twelfth transfer today. By her reckoning, Toth had been up and flying –an energy intensive exercise- for nearly sixteen hours, and he looked it.

"Good job Levi, you should get some rest. Let the servitors unload the equipment, I'm signing you off for the day." Despite the loud protests of the shuttle, whose frame was still adjusting after yet another reentry into the atmosphere, the pilot's exhausted wave assured Sola he had heard her. Levi would most likely just go to his piloting throne and pass out there. He displayed an unnatural amount of attachment to his shuttle, but she guessed it was only natural given how he came to be employed by Sigismund. It was as close to home as Toth would ever be again.

The vice factotum's augmented memory could make short work of today's duties, but she still insisted on marking things manually in her data slate. Advanced cogitation and mind link interfaces made for efficient data outputs but it left her bored and restless. And so here she was, trudging alongside the outpost's equipment transfers to the soon to be colonized Ultra Primaris, with Chastity shadowing her every step.

It was unclear to Sola if the young virgin guard was a blessing or a curse, but considering how she came to be Sola's bodyguard, it was probably both. The thought sparked her data core's memory coil into vivid recollection.

"I assure you its unnecessary captain, I don't need protection. In all the years serving the dynasty I have never come to harm, well… that's not entirely true, but Sigismund has always resolved the issue to my satisfaction." That too, was a bit of a lie, but Sola knew better than to outright complain about the dynasty's heir.

"No need to sugar coat it, vice factotum. We both know the _Semper Fidelis_ has had more catastrophes than any ship in the flotilla combined, and this during my brother's tenure as its captain alone. The lady dynast has seen fit to grant you the singular honor of her protection." Lucretia's disdain of her brother was clear despite the vid screen's static laced transmission.

"In a few hours the _Chariot_ and the _Son of Ultramar_ will be setting course to gather the resources needed for the colonization of Ultra Primaris. Your fate will be in the hands of Sigismund alone and the lady and I both consider you too valuable an asset to the dynasty to allow his impulsive tendencies to put you in harm's way."

Sola sighed internally. The Lucius dynasty was no different than most institutions within the Imperium. Political maneuvering and back alley scheming were the very life blood of their existence. And this smacked of a ploy against Sigismund, with her as a tool, the disposable kind.

"Then I thank you for your continued interest in my wellbeing captain. What should I expect?"

"We will transfer an initiate virgin guard to your retinue. Her name is Chastity, and although young, I assure you she shows the most consummate promise in regards to your safety. We only ask that you extend our concerns for your safety to her as well. She is to abstain from moral and physical corruption. The cloistered upbringing of the virgin guard will make her susceptible to certain temptations. If she is ever to return to her services on board the _Chariot_, she must remain pure."

Great. Sola would be adding babysitting to her long list of duties towards the dynasty. "It will be my pleasure and honor to serve."

"I'm glad you feel that way. You will have a bright future within the dynasty, I am sure." crooned Lucretia as the link faded.

"Chastity, please don't stand so close to the shuttle's thermal vents. They are still warm enough to melt the flesh from your bones."

"Huh? Oh, yes, thank you mistress!" the warrior in power armor was barely more than a child, and her obvious naïveté struck Sola with a soft pang of regret. Innocence was a quality on the verge of extinction in this life, or any other.

Chastity turned her awed curiosity away from the creaking shuttled and hurried up the cargo ramp after Sola. She clamped her Godwin pattern boltgun to her chest in ceremonious lethality, but despite her wide eyes and unblemished youth, Sola had no doubt the virgin guard knew how to put it to use. It was strange really, that such an inexperienced soul could manage to have wonder and steel in equal measure in her eyes. Bred for purpose, Sola mused, just like the lay populace of the Mechanicus forge worlds.

"You needn't call me mistress either. It's far too formal," teased Sola as he glanced over the identification runes of the plasteel crates in the Arvus lighter's bay.

"That… may take some getting used to my lady." Chastity squinted for a moment as she entered the dark hold and reflexively fixed her helmet to their coupling seals. The soft hum of photo receptors informed Sola of their activation.

"You really expect someone to attack me here Chastity? In our very own outpost, our very own shuttle, from our very own ship?"

"Without offense miss- my lady, the virgin guard is trained to secure the safest of places against would be assassins. The _Chariot_ is impregnable, but still we remain vigilant. Only once has the virgin guard failed in its duty, never again." Chastity murmured, an oath ingrained in her very being by endless repetition, no doubt.

The girl had a point. If a lady dynast could be assassinated in her very own floating fortress, than nowhere was safe.

Sola grumbled a silent curse, and looked at the shadowy recesses of the hold with a little less confidence.

Sigismund clutched his aching head. The dark of the armored cab was filled with smoky oil. It clawed and raked at his throat, robbing him of the breath he desperately tried to find. Beside him, Knuckles was gone, and the sheered latched which he used as a door laid on the grassy meadow beyond in the blinding light of the noon day sun.

What in the Emperor's name had happened? His fractured thoughts swam in the dull sea of aches and bruises he slowly began to feel across his body. He remembered setting out with Knuckles in his rig to get a better vantage over the land. Though the _Semper Fidelis_' auguries would map out the topology and catalogue the new found world's resources from on high, he had preferred to feel out this new place with his own senses. They had been driving, his orkish companion reveling in the opportunity to careen about in his armored monstrosity, and then suddenly, an impact. Had they crashed?

Sigismund crawled out of the fuming wreck in a coughing fit, rolling about on the soft ground before being able to breathe something akin to normal. When his eyes adjusted, he saw Knuckles standing by the front of his trukk scratching a gnarly yellowed fingernail against his thick skull.

"What did you hit?" the captain asked, now getting to his feet.

"Dunno boss. It ain't no rok, no tree, no nothin' I can see!"

He was right, though that was rare thing in itself. It certainly wasn't anything as mundane as a boulder. The front of the armored vehicle was smashed in, its power plant billowing thick black smoke and churning powerlessly in a clanking way that suggested it was dying. Knuckles was obviously concerned, that is, if you knew enough to tell his half a dozen expressions from one another. He was practically beside himself with worry and excitement. Worry for his bemoaning creation; excitement and the thought of getting to build something new.

"Still dun see it. Maybe its magik boss."

Sigismund looked around for something they might have plowed aside. Maybe it was further back behind them. "I don't see it either Knuckles. Whatever it was, it was big."

"Nah kaptin. I meanz I can't see it, but its de're!" the massive mountain of muscle kicked out with angry frustration, his iron shod boot clanging against something which momentarily shimmered like distorted air.

"What in the bloody warp…?' Sigismund made a roundabout and came beside the ork, whose continued frustration was being taken out on some sort of invisible structure, now slightly askewed. "How… what… what are the odds?"

Sigismund, now realizing his tricorne hat was flopping around the ground, quickly settled it back in its rightful place. Knuckle's orky logic had concluded long ago that the hat was the source of the boss man's power. Not unlike a crown. He often eyeballed it and its many variant styles for the opportunity to issue a challenge. Luckily, he hadn't noticed because he was too engrossed trying to kill what had hurt his trukk. They had been either very lucky, or very unlucky, considering they had been rolling down an open meadow a few kilometers wide and somehow hit the cloaked structure.

With a huff of expended energy and a last bone crushing punch, the structure materialized before them at Knuckles' insistence.

"Der'e it goes, dat'all teach it to mess with my trukk! Boss, I killed it!"

"Good job Knuckles, good job. Any idea what it is?"

The two stared up at it, a long carved arch made of bone and oval gems shimmering with internal light. It was unlike anything they had ever seen, which didn't mean much to the angry ork, who had already forgotten about what it might be in place of what it could become. Fizzling synapses sparking together filled his brain in orky delight at the many possible uses for this new material. With an excited limp, his iron shod boot now deformed and seizing his foot, he hurried towards his trukk to fetch his chain axe.

"Wait up Knuckles, we can't dismantle it just yet. There's something familiar about how it looks."

From behind the perplexed captain, the fired-up ork boy let go of his axe's revving chain with exasperated abandon. He dropped the weighty murder tool at his feet and rolled his pinprick eyes with lull of disappointment.

They met in the outpost's de facto operational headquarters a few days later. It was little more than the first prefab structure the adepts and their servitors had erected, meant for house the work force and armsmen needed to secure the landing site. For all its lack of charm it was none the less functional. Within its administrative floor was a modest conference room used to coordinate with the _Semper Fidelis_ in high orbit above and the surveyors which were sent to take samples and gauge environmental factors for colonization. In this, they had been mostly useless beyond the first few days of their arrival. Ultra Primaris was lush, with clement weather, and no perceivable threats from flora or fauna.

"Alright then gentlemen, here is what we know." Sola punctuated her opening remark by lighting the hololithic projector at the conference table's center. Data streamed along with its depiction of the local region, the outpost, and the site they had discovered the mysterious arch.

"As far as the colonization efforts are concerned, Anthonid Lucius' decision to exploit this world might have been a stroke of genius."

Adept Pollux interrupted with what she perceived was a more valuable interpretation. "Ultra Primaris exhibits excellent colonization parameters. It is estimated it stands at four standard deviations to the subsector planetary average. In all relevant fields, the success-ratio coefficient is 99.5% with established patterns. Atmospheric gases, thermodynamic weather patterns, mantle density, agri resources, as well as exploitable geological nodes exist across the spectrum to supply standard template construct requirement."

The vice facto nodded in thanks, which adept Pollux seem to ignore, and restated what she knew was within her audience's capacity to understand. "This planet is a gift from the Emperor."

"I am more concerned with this artifact, the one the ravenkin discovered," added master at arms Keever. Considering the possible dangers inherit in colonizing a new world, the nominal head of the _Semper Fidelis' _security had insisted on making planet fall once evidence of native life was discovered.

Sigismund caught the vice factotum's eye twitch momentarily at the interruption. She raised her data slate and flicked her fingers over what undoubtedly had been a well-organized and thorough briefing. She finally sent her data to the holo projector, a luminescent arc of xeno design materializing a foot above the projector.

"As Sigismund guessed, the structure is of Eldar design. They have been reported to use a wide array of holo technologies which baffle imperial auspex and cloak structures as well as their agents from sight. From the data cores at my disposal as well as the dynastic librarium I believe this structure is commonly referred to as a webway gate. These are used by the Eldar to travel from one place to another at incredible speeds without resorting to conventional means. Their exact specifications and means of operations are unknown to us, but their purpose are not."

"We have Eldars on our hands, then" concluded Sigismund. "How sure are we of the possibility of attack?"

"Well," Sola crossed her arms and sighed longly. "These structures have been found on worlds across the galactic expanse, sometimes abandoned and in disrepair, other times active and used by the Eldar for their inscrutable needs. It's not always a guarantee of conflict. The possibility of an opportunistic use however, is not out of the question."

The armored bulk of the raven clan knight shifted in his seat. "We should destroy any we find. This world is too valuable to leave in the hands of xenos, and our position is far too fragile at the moment. I suggest you return to the ship captain."

"I appreciate the sentiment Keever, but I won't run from a fight, least of all the threat of one. It's not in my blood."

Adept Pollux's mechadendrites twitched over her shoulders. "It is within dynastic mandate to appropriate any xeno technology. I suggest against destroying them, we should acquire them as nondestructively as possible. Omnissiac congregator Leitwig should be contacted for further consultation."

Sigismund weighted the options and turned to Sola, still patiently standing on her presentation to continue. "Can we locate them using the ship's auspex array?"

"Theoretically, yes. But the webway's holo fields would be a problem for us as they seem to oscillate between frequencies making any standard augury difficult without a specialized communion with the arrays. In short, it will take time."

"Approximately 39.6 hours," added adept Pollux.

"In the meantime," Sigismund said as he stood from his chair and batted grime from his hat, "have servitors erect flak walls to cut line of sight on the outpost and protect our workers. Keever, send down a few more companies of armsmen. Sola, you once told me Remi is a competent xenoacheologist, consult with him on the gravity of the threat."

"And you?" asked Sola with her arms instinctively crossed.

"I'm going to take Knuckles for a walk," said the captain with a chuckle.

The gathered officers quietly filed out, while Sigismund flashed Sola a confident smile to ease her mounting blood pressure, leaving only the vice factotum with her new bodyguard alone in the conference room.

"He seems at ease my lady, is it always this simple for him?" queried the curious virgin guard.

"Him? Yes. But it's rarely ever the case for the rest of us, it's like going through the warp in a hand basket.

"Oh…" said the bodyguard, gripping her bolter tight.

The trio of stalkers observed their prey. It had sense the danger and walled itself in, a pitiful obstruction to the justice that would soon be visited upon it. Cloaked invisibly in the lush forests of their paradise, they waited and plotted to disable their foe before the coming of the warhost. For weeks now the imperials had rode far and wide to find the webway gates which littered the paradise world, further compounding their blasphemous presence. All the while, under the careful gaze of the hunters, their every weakness had been made clear.

"Elamnyl is taking too long to rouse the storm. This is the 3rd gate to fall to their filthy hands in as many weeks," said the first. He trained the scope of his long rifle on the offending party as they rifled with the innards of yet another webway gate.

"It matters not, it is inconceivable that this affront remain unanswered. With the supplies we have gathered from our allies, we will rain fear and death upon the simple minded mon keigh. We must simply bide our time," said the second.

"At night fall then, we strike?" asked the third, his gullet rising at the sight of a hated greenskin carrying the dismantled gate components to his monstrous vehicle.

The rangers nodded in unison. They tightened their cameleon cloaks around their lithe frame and checked their satchels for the traps they would lay. Tonight, the mon keigh would taste the first of many stings, and soon fall to the ravages of the tempest of blades.

The corridors of the _Semper Fidelis_ were raw, brutal things. Chastity had only known a world of marble façades, fluted columns, and the beauty of the lady dynast's sanctuary. Gone were the polished life-like statues of noble imperials, gone the regal majesty of Ultramar's bold architecture, gone the well-lit and fragrant halls.

In their place was gunmetal grey and holy lubricants; hastily tied power couplings and dust hovering like a veil; the constant clanking of booted feet on meshed floors; and agonizing vitae systems cycling desperately to scrub the breathable air of carbon. The _Semper Fidelis_ was a war beast with the scars to prove it and an internal design built to foil boarding parties. Chastity had been trained to repel boarding parties, a skill second only to that of safeguarding her charges. It was in her nature to recognize the flaws and merits of a ship's layout. Despite its lack of elegance, the _Semper Fidelis_ was a fortress. Bulkwards and tight corridors made advancing against a committed defense a costly affair, despite the structural supports that braced its byways and which offered opportunistic cover, the casualty rates would easily be tenfold for attackers.

Her analysis was interrupted as a cloaked figure parted the tangible air. Dark sumptuous robes hid a sinuous body which see to float more than walked. The cowled stranger halted in front of her, rich embroided heraldry marking him as a member of one of the three navigator houses contracted by the dynasty as a whole. House Xan Tai and house Modar each navigated for the _Son of Ultra_mar and the _Chariot_ respectively, while the _Semper Fidelis_ had house Nostromo's scions. It was a security measure enacted after house Xan Tai had, centuries ago, used their monopoly over the flotilla's ship as an ill-conceived bargaining chip. The separation of power seemed to be the natural state of affair for the Lucius dynasty.

Both man and girl now stared silently at each other for a long moment. The stranger sighed theatrically.

"She is awaiting my presence," said the navigator indignantly to the statuesque bodyguard.

"Whom should I announce?" countered the guard with equal obstinance.

The navigator cocked his head curiously and leaned in close, as if seeking to peer past the thick visor of Chastity's helm and into her very soul. The virgin guard's tight sculpted bodice was expertly wrought, decorated in the same style as that fool Sigismund, and his ancestral wargear.

This one emulated the female form in tantalizing ways, the product of the repressed sexual fantasies of a long dead dynast. A soldier boy's toy. Even the authentic cotton drape she wore as a cloak only served to hint at an impossibly fit and curvaceous body the likes this child would never have.

"She told me you were young, I had no idea just how so."

The girl who-would-be-warrior snapped. Weeks of carnal leering at her and her mistress by the likes of dirty voidsmen had reach its crescendo. And here was yet another, uncomfortably close, slighting her honor and her profession with imperious arrogance.

Before the shocked navigator realized her intention, he was held firmly by the collar of his robes and slammed against the corridor's wall, a primed boltgun nuzzled against his chest.

"Unless you unhand me this instant peasant, you will be closing the last chapter of your miserably short life." growled Remi.

Chastity slammed the navigator against the wall again and quickly stepped back with her bolter shouldered and ready to fire when the portal to Sola's quarters slid on grimy gear.

"Chastity, no!" shrieked the factotum.

Remi was still straightening himself up when Sola brushed the Boltgun away from him. A stern glare from Sola sent her bodyguard into demurred contrition, kneeling at her side.

"Forgive me my lady, I acted rashly. A slight on my honor is no excuse. I should not have acted in a way that would dishonor you towards you guest. I beg for your castigation of my sin."

Sola's gaze flitted from her guard to Remi, whose ire was hotter than she had ever seen, and waved him into her quarters politely. The robbed navigator entered in a huff. Sola sighed, she had been doing a lot of that lately, and turned her attention to the kneeling virgin guard.

"Please, stand-up." The young guard did as she was told, taking her helmet off to show her shame properly. Her soft child-like eyes were filled with tears, held back by dint of will.

Soft yet steely, Sola realized. The perfect blade. But was the virgin guard a blade at her service, or at her throat?

"Things are different here Chastity. It's not like on the chariot. Honor needs to be tempered with wisdom. It's not going to be black or white anymore. Just follow my lead and you will see. I've had to tolerate my fair share of compromising situation, not to mention the almost daily urge I have of throttling a certain someone."

The bodyguard nodded, tears flowing silently. This galaxy would destroy Chastity and Sola knew it, it had done its best to destroy her too. She reached out and wiped her tears away with her soft hands, a gentle smile soothing the guilt wracked face of the young warrior. When Chastity finally offered an embarrassed smile, Sola left her to her duties.

The portal had barely closed that Remi complained, amasec in hand. "You should train your pets better Sola. I detest being touched by the rabble."

Sola nodded in understanding. She suspected Remi's vulnerability had not been left on that penal world. It still dogged him at every step. It was hard to imagine, being the only navigator, a mutant, abandoned by his house and left with the worst scum and villainy the imperium had to offer. Still, Chastity had her own strains to cope with and far less experience in doing so.

"She's not my pet, Remi." The vice factotum smiled softly, fetching herself a drink from the cabinet Remi had already pilfered. She joined him, lounging in her not-so-modest quarters. The perks she had fought tooth and nail to accrue under Sigismund's captaincy.

Now face to face, each in their own carnodon leather sofa, they could get down to business.

"Lucretia and the lady dynast offered her services to protect me."

Remi seemed puzzled, his robes no longer veiling his features except for the cloth that hid his navigator's eye.

"Strange. A trap then? The Lucius are no amateurs to this game of thrones. Surely she has ulterior motives, this virgin…"

"I suspect her mistress does, though Chastity is far too raw a tool to use for infiltration and intelligence gathering." Sola sipped her favored vintage, groaning softly as she melted into the comfort of her quarters. The outpost had been far less accommodating and these past few weeks had been hard on everyone. Especially Chastity, who had never been off the chariot; never had to content with men and their behavior; and who had all but lived in her power armor. The girl had only taken it off to bathe and tend to its rites of maintenance.

"She didn't even know what catcalling was until I told her. She just thought it was one of those strange things men did, like scratch their crotch and spit all over the place."

"Mhm, a ruse perhaps? Hypno-conditioning? Implanted detonation device? Perhaps her system is laced with neurotoxins release upon orgasm…"

"Orgasm? She's a _virgin_ guard Remi," the vice factotum chuckled. What world did Remi live in that such convoluted plots took place? Sola reminded herself to never visit the navigator's spire.

"If I wanted Sigismund dead, that's how I'd do it." The navigator sneered slightly as he took another sip. The best Sola had to offer was still pitiful swivel compared to the spire's menu. He politely tried to smile, which came off as blatantly forced. Sola appreciated his attempts none the less.

"Now that you mention it. Sigismund would probably fall for that, hard… But on a more pressing note, you sent me a notice that you had finished your research on the materials I sent you."

Remi put down his glass of amasec, the rich red velvet of its skirt splashing about for his unappreciative eye.

"Yes, and I fear it's worse than we might have thought." The Nostromo gathered his sleeves and slipped his hands within them, becoming as inscrutable as the folds which hid his nature. "The archives of my house are far reaching, yet with only a fraction of it copied on board, I can still confidently say that the dynasty stumbled upon a danger greater than its ability to survive it."

Sola frowned, her focused attention sparked the cogitator nestled in her head into life, recording every word with eidetic clarity. "Worse than a potential Eldar conflict?"

"It is no longer a possibility Sola, it is as inevitable as the currents of the warp. This is no ordinary world, it is an artificially crafted paradise awaiting the return of its creators. It is a maiden world, a sanctuary design to house the Eldar race once it survives its decline, a left over artifact of a time when their empire covered the galaxy."

"I knew this was too good to be true." The factotum crossed referenced endless data in her augmented mind, compiling risk assessments and time tables to reach the inevitable conclusion Remi had long since discovered. "We will never be prepared in time. Our forces are spread too thin."

"It gets worse." Remi leaned in, a rare act of confidence he only shared with Sola. "The runes of the webway assemblage, the gate, it bears the mark of Craftworld Biel-Tan. The star charts confirm this. Once every few decades the presence of Eldars rise in the Koronus Expanse. Evidently, Craftworld Biel-Tan travels an unknown circuit which takes it relatively close to this location. Day for day, we are now at the peak of their clockwise resurgence."

Sola took a deep gulp of her amasec, drowning the rising tremor tingling up her spine. "These Craftworlds, they are the same as the mythical ships we hear whispers about? The ones with entire Eldar colonies on their back?"

The navigator nodded solemnly. "The very same. Biel-Tan is known amongst its brethren as the most militant. Its Eldars are devoted to the restoration of their empire of old. They fall upon their enemies in a storm of blades which leave little to no survivors, if they so choose. Sola, we have stepped upon hallowed grounds. It's no longer a matter of time before they notice, for they undoubtedly have. It's rather a matter of time before every last trace of our people are wiped from the world's surface. The _Bhazhakhain_, as they call it, is on its way."

"Omnissiah preserve us," Sola gasped. "I need to warn Sigs." The vice factotum stood on shaky legs. If Remi was right, and he had a habit of being so, the Eldar were poised to strike and the entirety of the outpost was in no shape for an evacuation. Sola herself had boarded the last shuttle of the day's cycle to meet with Remi. All she knew about the mysterious Eldar convinced her of their ability to strike when their foe was at its most vulnerable, lightning fast and with extreme lethality.

Remi left his seat in far less of a panic than his bereaved companion. "It would do little for me to go planeside at the moment. But please promise me you will send a warning and not go down yourself?"

Sola was already packing her kit with essentials. "I'm sorry Remi, I can't. You know he won't listen to anyone else. I can barely reign him in half the time, it would be impossible for anyone else."

Remi grumbled. "Alright then. I'll meet you at the lighter bay, but give me some time. I need to check on something before we leave. It's important."

Sola slung her kit bag over her shoulder and nodded, beaming with gratitude as she hurried out of her quarters with her communication device in hand. Chastity looked into the room with concern and confusion than quickly followed in her mistress' footsteps.

Deep within the dank recesses of the _Semper Fidelis_, Remi reached the gene forge provided by his arrangement with Sigismund. Despite the urgency of the matter at hand, and Sola's insistence, he had made his way to the site of what he whimsically decided would be his life's work. After a few biometric locks and a somewhat invasive blood sample, the forge beckoned him to enter.

Meyer was bent over an array of pict screens rummaging through reams of data. He hadn't noticed Remi's entrance despite the clanking of multiple locking mechanism.

"How goes the sampling?" asked Remi after silently slinking over to Meyer's side.

The nervous junior scrambled in a panic, struggling to hide the view screens from his surprise intruder while utterly failing to the grasp the futility of the act. Behind him, a large observation window peered onto a row of sedated and restrained test subjects in the process of being prodded and probed by servitor attendants.

"Pater's balls, Remi, you nearly frightened the warp out of me!" the poor soul was panting and clutching at his robes.

"Yes, yes, now… the samples?"

"Ah..well…uhm…" after a quick flip of a switch the studium's lumen globes came to life and illuminated the containment area where various degrees of mutations grew out of their host.

"Stable for the most part, but a few succumbed to the rapid acting mutagens that we have exposed them to. The stock we gathered at the port is almost all exhausted. I've had to… make arrangements."

As he watched, an emaciated woman was having a syringe full of radioactive wastewater gathered from the fusion core pumped into her lachrymal canal. Her wild open eyes betrayed the waning effects of the sedation, despite the long drooling trail splattered down the constriction table.

"Arrangements? With whom?" the incredulity sloughed off Remi's tongue like the sheerings from a farm animals.

"Mister Devros…" muttered Meyer anxiously.

"Why does that ring a bell?"

"He's the twist catcher. He brings me specimens which aren't too far progressed."

Remi grunted in surprise at Meyer's initiative. "I trust you will compare the new specimens with our control template?"

"I already have," answered the junior a bit irritably.

"Singled out genetic anomalies and measured their malignancy resistance?" continued Remi.

"Yes, yes. I know what I'm doing!" spat Meyer.

Remi turned slowly towards his assistant and borrowed deep into his eyes with his own. He gripped Meyer's collar in reminiscence of his earlier confrontation. "Listen here you ball-less little crotch filth. You continue to serve on a voidship by my pleasure. This is _my_ work, _my_ research, and you will do as I say without qualm or repudiation, understood?"

Meyer nodded quickly and swallowed what felt like a fist size rock. His normal ashen complexion paled considerably, and when Remi was confident that his authority had been restore, he finally let go of his now spineless junior.

"I expect all the sequences to be sorted out by the time I return for the planet. I want all known reaction and mutagenic iteration catalogued for the last few months and then cross referenced with the Nostromo gene bank. Hopefully there will be statistically significant cross overs we will be able to explore further down the road."

Eyes cast at his feet, Meyer only nodded.

"Oh and Meyer, how's Pater doing these days?"

"Wretched…" chanced the subdued navigator. "Real space no longer agrees with him."

"Good." Remi smiled. Genuinely for once.

The outpost was on fire. Sigismund had no idea how it had happened. The simultaneous detonations had lit up most of the bases' supply depots and woken him from the deep sleep he had enjoyed. The first thing he had reached for when he woke had been his gladius, the second his comm bead. Even now as he ordered a report, he was slipping into his armored storm coat and tightening on his wrist mounted storm bolter.

"Keever! What in Terra's name is happening?"

The gruff voice of his master of arms cut through the chatter of the general channel, already swamped with cried of alarm and sightings of enemy contact.

"The Eldar attack ravenkin. We have light sniper fire at the south gate, some sort of las weapon with incredible range. Two confirmed shooters for now, but there could be more."

Keever's report was interrupted with the blinding light of a plasma detonation by the south gate. It lit the night sky for a moment, then was followed by the grumbling detonation of a vehicular power plant.

Sigismund raced to the observation window of the operational headquarters. "Talk to me Keever, what's going on?"

"Charges my lord. I ordered an armored transport to chase away the snipers. They… must have mined the gate's exit."

"Snipers and mines? Is that all we know?" the confirmation rang hollow in the captain's ear. The attack was too soft to be a full engagement. They were being caged in, denied mobility, and their supplies where going up in smoke.

"It's a distraction… Keever, keep our men in cover, don't sally out." Sigismund's mind raced to find the Eldar's true objective. They were canny and skilled opponents, the few boarding operations against their corsair ships had taught him that. He still had the shuriken scars to remind him. "Where's Knuckles?"

"He lumbered to the motor pool when the attack began sire."

Of course he would. It was time they consolidated their assets. Somewhere in this compound a saboteur had free reign. With his men pinned down and their efforts naturally focused outside, it made perfect sense for an infiltrator to hit high priority targets. The supplies, although an added bonus, would not be enough to deter imperial occupation. Reinforcements and resupply runs could be made from the _Semper Fidelis_ easily enough. So what was it they were after?

The flames didn't bother him one bit. His hide was tough and his newly repaired rig needed his attention. The motor pool was filled with promethium barrels from its fire shed. Someone had opened the blast door and rolled a few in to spread the blaze. Burning flesh filled the room and mixed with the chemicals that now littered the repair hangar's floor. The noxious fumes tingled in Knuckles' nostrils. He kinda liked it.

Plowing through the burning wreckages in his way, the ork grabbed onto his cab latch, the searing metal cooking the flesh of his hand but failing to deter him. With a bellow and a yank, the rig was open and he climbed in. Despite his natural orkiness, the smoke was starting to affect him. Pinprick stabbed at his eyes, making him chuckle with delight. His hands quickly pulled, pushed, and punched at the necessary levers and studs to make his rig ignite into motion. With a blood curdling howl, Knuckles punched the accelerator and tore the bay door off their railing at ramming speed, which now careened behind his blazing trukk.

The chortling engine puffed oily black smoke into the night sky as he slalomed along the outpost's buildings towards the HQ. Knuckles instinctively knew, deep in his orky heart, that the boss would go for the thickest of the fighting and get stuck in. that's how you became a boss after all. The armored monstrosity grinded to a halt in a blaring cacophony of gears and piston just as Sigismund existed the building. The two locked eyes and Knuckles kicked the side hatch open in a surprising display of flexibility.

Sigismund hopped in, careful to hold on to his hat. "You know your rig's on fire, right?"

"Wut ain't boss?" cackled the mek boy. With a jarring yank, the orkish driver slammed the stick between them in his casing and stomped the clutch, sending the transmission screeching into life. Before he even had directions, the trukk barreled down the streets.

"I can't figure it out Knucks, it makes no sense. What are they after?" The question was rhetorical, but the ork sunk his fangs into it anyway. Knuckles swerved pass a few stunned armsmen as he wandered randomly in search of a fight.

"Dey ain't no where ta be seenz boss. Got a puny wagh, they do. Dey ain't evenz spoiling fur a stompin.'

Sigismund furrowed his brow. Partly because Knuckles' driving was likely to kill him before the Eldars would, but partly because he was making a tiny bit of sense.

"These xenos don't like a straight up fight. What would I do if I didn't want more than I'm willing to handle?"

"But ya do, right boss?" the ork arched a bushy eye brow, clearly being unfamiliar with the concept of shying from a fight. "You should git on yaz boss pole and call up sum more boys for a proper fight! Then they ain't everz gettin' away."

The captain cast his insane driver a sideways glance. "My boss pole…? You mean the comm tower? Yes! Knuckles, head for the vox mast and step on it!"

"wut you think I'm doin' boss!" the ork roared madly as he twisted his chain link and iron bar steering wheel, slamming the side of the armored trukk into an outhouse and pulverizing its contents. They were finally going to get stuck in, and Knuckles didn't spare his transmission getting there.

"There!" Sigismund pointed at the Eldar, who had abandoned stealth to place plasma charges on the vox mast's foundation, and prepared to disembark from the rig. Knuckles had other plans though. As the rig neared the comm tower, the nimble Eldar threw himself into a roll and survived the ork's mad attempt to run him over. The rig smashed into one of the support struts, making the tower groan and list but remain largely erect.

Sigismund growled curses which would have made confessor Alabaster lash him with penitence. Forcing his jarred body out of the rig, the captain circled around to where the Eldar had disappeared. Knuckles lingered on inside the cab, fetching his orky chain axe before jumping out into what he hoped would be an all-out brawl. Much to his disappointment, Sigismund was standing over the prone shape of the only Eldar in sight, whose daring roll had not left him entirely unscathed.

The lithe xeno was clawing at the ground, trying to recover from the grazing hit Knuckles had managed to land with his rig. It braced an awkwardly angled arm to its chest, fingers outstretched towards its lost pistol. The slim, long necked weapon was disturbingly elegant in its seamless design. Like most things these xenos possessed, Sigismund suspected it had been grown instead of assembled, somehow.

"Two against one," Sigismund pitied the xeno as he leveled his storm bolter. Knuckles stomped to his side, wild eyes searching for a foe to clubber. "Hardly seems fair."

"Indeed, mon keigh!" The soft spoken gothic hit their ears at the same time as a flurry of shuriken peppered Knuckles' shoulder with hot stings. Before Sigismund could identify the newcomer, a flash of movement instinctively made him jump back as a glimmering blade cut the edge of his storm coat.

"Elamnyl!" cried the prone Eldar, now struggling to his feet as his companion stood between him and his assailants. They exchanged words which set Sigismund's hair on end, its sound a lulling singsong tone whose melody was unintelligible. Quickly, the wounded ranger began to hobble away. The dynastic scion stepped back further, drawing his gladius and igniting the power field which coated the plasteel length. It was a pale comparison to the naked edge of the Eldar's bone white sliver.

"Oie! Stickman, dat wasn't very noice. Com her'e and git wut's coming to ya!" Knuckles was plodding towards the cloaked swordsman, but before Sigismund could warn him, the eldar had already slipped past the orks sloppy guard and sliced at his midriff, following through with his momentum to clear out of Knuckles' grasp and fire a flurry of tinkling shuriken shards Sigismund's way.

The captain threw himself into a roll and recovered his stance in time to parry the pathfinder's lightning fast strikes with his gladius, and a few clumsy steps back. The eldar was impossibly fast, moving like the wind without even the slightest of tells. He was impossible to predict and kept Sigismund easily off balance. It was all the scion could do to stay alive.

"Knuckles! Warp damn you, help me out!"

The frenzied ork quickly glanced between the retreating eldar, limping away, and the git that had cut him. His mind was quickly made, reminded by the razor pain which infuriatingly ran across his guts. The ork roared with instinctual bloodlust and threw himself at the pathfinder's back. The swift swordsman picked up on the flank with impossible awareness, he quickly shoved Sigismund and slipped under Knuckles' wide swing with a dancer's ease of mouvement.

Left at their feet were small crystalline orbs which suddenly burned as bright as a star. With Sigismund on his back and Knuckles oblivious to the danger, the photo grenades turned the dark, fire laced night into a white haze. The prone captain turned onto his stomach a moment too late and was left as blind as the raging ork, who swung his chain axe in wanton patterns in search of his foe. The bellowing greenskin's anger sent the dirt shivering, but ended abruptly moments after.

Knuckles breath was suck out of his lungs as a thin slice of wraithbone pierced his ribbed chest and charred the organs within. The power field wreaked havoc within Knuckles' body before being pulled out with a languishing flourish. The muscle bound ork crumbled into silence.

"Knuckles? Knuckles, answer me!" Sigismund screamed as his companion fell silent. His overloaded sense were reeling inside his head, but he managed to push himself up from the ground before being unceremoniously returned to it by the Eldar's boot.

"The hated foe will speak no more mon keigh," the whispering wind was drawing close now, his unnatural accent still present in his otherwise perfect gothic. "I have traveled from one end of this galaxy to the next. Never have I found a more disgusting species than greenskins. But yours, mon keigh, come in close second."

Sigismund could swear that his sight was recovering. The blinding white was somehow darker. Growing grey. But his guts still roiled within him, begging to be emptied. Sigismund bit through the delirious vertigo and rolled onto his back to blindly spray the emptiness around him with high caliber bolt rounds.

When the bolter ran dry, the pathfinder continued nonplussed.

"You have trespassed where none should ever. The storm is coming mon keigh, and you will be naught but ribbons at its end. Know that you have been laid low by four of my kind tonight. Your entire hundreds, dancing to our melody, to Kaela Mensha Khaine's bloody tune. By dawn, the warhost will have arrived and you will face a thousand more of me."

His sight was truly returning, but slowly, achingly so. The night began to take shape, but the forms around him were still a blur. Squatting beside him was the cloaked pathfinder, elbows resting on his knees in perfect symmetry.

Above them, the hot thermal wash of Arvus lighters kicked up a dust storm. The pathfinder craned his neck to watch the clumsy ships land nearby.

"What is it your kind is so fond of saying? The Emperor protects?" The xeno smiled soullessly. "Let us put that to the test, mon keigh."


	7. Chapter 7

_**Into the Breach:**_

_**Part 7**_

The world came back to him in a rush of disorienting pain. He was being held down, multiple hands pinning him as he trashed. A sharp pain speared him through the gut as he lashed out, but the satisfying crunch of his elbow hitting one of his assailant's face was reward enough. The pressure let up briefly after that. A blurry haze robbed him of sight and sound, but he wouldn't go out quietly.

"Sigs!" cried out a familiar voice, "It's all right, we got you, calm down!"

His hesitation was all they needed to prick him with another needle.

"Morphium balm administered, this should counteract the stimms we used to wake him up." He didn't recognize that one's voice. What was going on?

The pain that drove his desperate struggle ebbed, the knifing pain in his abdomen subsiding. All the desperate energy bled from him in a soft abandon, though it allowed him to look about him in less of a panic.

"Sigs," came Sola's worried voice. "You're all right, do you hear me, it's all right!" her face hovered over his, her cold hands cradling his fevered head.

"What happened to me?" Sigismund asked through gritted teeth. His efforts to sit up were met with restraining hands, which he batted aside angrily. They were in the administratum prefab's ground level, buzzing lumen strips casting everything in a sickly yellow light, dozens of injured armsmen littered every flat surface of a made shift medicae center. Some suffered las wounds, others promethium burns. The worst were those whose bodies or limbs were charred from high intensity plasma flares. No matter the balm or the treatment, those few unlucky souls writhed in agonizing pain. A handful of corpsmen struggled to keep the wounded alive, or administered lethal doses of morphium to those whose last remaining act was to depart to the Emperors' side.

"Knuckles, how is he?" asked the captain as he took in the scene around him.

"I'm sorry Sigs, he's…he's dead." The vice factotum's acute senses registered everything in her surroundings, but her unwavering attention was all on Sigismund. "Whatever felled him charred his insides. Even an ork couldn't survive that…"

Loss slowly etched itself in Sigismund's features. He quickly pushed it down. "The Eldar attacked us, it was a sabotage mission by their scouts. One of them, Elamnyl, he did this." The wounded captain ran a hand along his bandaged midriff, blood seeping slowly from his ill-advised decision to sit up.

Sola nodded softly. "It's worst, this is a maiden world, a sanctuary of theirs. They will send a force to wipe us out."

"I know," Sigismund said with a wince as he shifted his weight.

"You do?" Sola couldn't hide her surprise.

"Bastard boasted about it. They will be here by dawn, or so he says."

"Sigs, that's only six hours away!" Sola didn't panic, she worried. And now, it was writ large on her face. "We need to speed up the evacuation."

Beside them, a limping armsmen bumped into the desk Sigs had been mended on. The reverberation sent him in a coughing fit. The soldier apologized profusely but was waved away by his sneering superior, whose usual charming demeanor was worn thin at the moment.

"You already started? Figures you would. What's our time table?"

A sigh. "We only have three lighters at our disposal, the _Semper Fidelis_ wasn't equipped to deal with this kind of procedure. We mainly have cargo holds crammed with wounded armsmen and ratings. Even so, and especially because we dropped nearly 300 soldiers on the ground beforehand. It would take approximately 10 hours to get everyone off world, and that's not counting the equipment."

"To the warp with the equipment. Keep it going, speed it up if you can. And get me every available officer in the conference room, when their duties permit."

Sola was already tabulating the millions of throne gelts they would be losing, it was her habit. "Wait, you're not staying here. Sigs you're in no fighting shape, this isn't a game!"

"Ask Knuckles if I think it's a game." The captain eased himself onto his feet, anger smoldering behind his doe brown eyes. Sola knew better to argue with him when he was like this, although it's exactly what she had come planet side to do. She returned his stubborn gaze and turned on her heels to execute the orders of the mighty son of Lucius, a fool with already a foot in the grave.

Sergeant Barr was waiting at ease by the Lord Captain's meeting room. Before him had entered the anachronistic feudal warlord who held the title of master of arms. That was, indirectly, his boss, but no one gave orders to the storm troopers attached to the warship except his CO and the captain, and only one of them was in any shape to give orders at the moment. When the war platted raven knight left the conference room, Barr was waved in by an attending armsmen. The storm trooper sergeant scowled. Armsmen were shoddy soldiers by his account and Barr often denigrate them, which made the attendant's invitation all the more glacial for it.

The Lord Captain looked up from his seat at the table, which he was leaning a little too heavily on, propping himself on his elbows to hide a wound. Gut shot, guessed Barr. The storm trooper marched smartly to the table's edge and slammed his foot down in his usual military fashion. Barr thought he saw the captain wince.

"I asked for your Lieutenant. Is there a reason he's not here and you are?"

"Yes sir, the LT took a las round to the temple when we arrived to pull your ass out of the fire." Sigismund had to give the elite trooper credit, he threw his barbs so matter-of-factly that it seemed more of a report than a reproach.

"Alright then, sorry for your loss," the captain continued. The trooper shrugged nonchalantly. "Here are the details of your orders," Sigismund slid the data slate towards the sergeant, who stood stock still despite the slate almost sliding off the table's edge.

"The long and short of it is that I'm asking you to commit your boys to a rearguard action that will undoubtedly result in heavy casualties. After the ratings are evacuated from the outpost, the armsmen will follow, then your boys will be extracted, if any survive."

The storm trooper kept his gaze front and center, he might as well have been told his favorite soup was off the menu, for all he seemed to care. Sigismund frowned.

"I'm ordering you into a suicide action, sergeant." The captain reiterated.

"Yes, sir!" came the trooper's stone cold reply.

"You could at least make me feel guilty for it."

"Why sir? We are schola progenium elite drop troopers. The best of the best. First in and last out. And since we were late to the ball, it's the least we could do."

"Bloody bastard, I know you glory boys are tough, but you must have reservations." Sigismund eyed the sergeant, he hadn't expected an outright refusal, but at least some kind of objection. It didn't feel right to ask a man to die and have him just….stand there.

Barr shifted his weight from one foot to the other, he moved so little he might have just passed wind. "Permission to speak freely Lord Captain."

"I've been asking you to do that for the last few minutes, sergeant."

"Serving under you has been the longest, most frakking waste of life I ever could have imagined. I was trained to give my life for Imperium and Emperor. To stand against his countless enemies and all those who would stand against the manifest destiny of mankind. During my tenure, all I've done is board ships for you to plunder, with very few xenos in sight. But I was given a mandate, serve and shut the gak up, so I have. If sticking to my duties under you is not the most expedient way of reaching the left arm of the Emperor, I don't know what is. So if you will please send me on my way, sir, I got some dying to do."

Sigismund looked as if he had been slapped in the face my Knuckles. He dismissed Sergeant Barr with a wave, and the man left with his orders in hand.

Well, sighed the captain, careful what you ask for.

The nearby embedded pict screen garbled to life with an incoming transmission from the _Semper fidelis_. Sigismund opened the channel and Hubert's kindly face appeared, along with its frown.

"Hello old friend," greeting Sigismund. "Have you called to persuade me to leave also?"

The hours had trickled away. Outside the ravaged maintenance bay, Arvus lighters flitted to and fro in an unending cascade of engine noises.It barely registered with adept's Pollux's sensors. She had spent all of her available time trying to salvage equipment the only way she knew how.

Serving aboard a Rogue Trader ship came with many unhealthy habits. It encouraged a certain free spirited ingenuity which gnawed at any true servant of the cult of mars. What she was doing now would have been considered heresy by her peers back on the forge worlds of the Calaxis sector. Fortunately, she had found satisfaction in this hectic life. Pollux had the nasty habit of interrupting her superiors with out of order suggestion, ruining their perfectly packaged data blurts with her own disorganized binaric bursts. The contents of her suggestions were often considered the worse of the offense. The conservative leanings of the Mechanicus did not look favorably unto those who deviated from the sanctioned standard template rites.

Had she enough flesh left for it, she would have smirked. Her mechadendrites worked furiously, helped by her inferior fleshy hands, to equip and reprogram the labour servitors' subroutines. Industrial tools were turned to the purpose of shedding alien blood. Pneumatic sheers, impact hammers, plasma torches, and anything with a latent potential for violence were mounted onto their silent hosts. Flak plates and plasteel sheets were riveted to yielding flesh, and the mechanical anchors beneath. Auspex systems designed to analyze, measure, and locate structural weaknesses were altered to locate and eliminate designated enemy profiles.

Oh yes, she had indeed perverted the designs of the Omnissiah, and made abominations of tranquil machine spirits. Before her stood the shadow of a skitarii cohort, with her as their tribune. These servitors would not be optimal for combat operations against a professional enemy force, but they would soak up enough fire to spare those better trained at dealing death. The alternative, which her brethren would no doubt have embraced, would have been enacting the final rites of deactivation, followed by a summary complaint form filed to the closest Mechanicus superior.

No, there would be no waste here. The equipment marked to be left behind would be put to purpose.

With a hypersonic binary blurt, the servitors rose their heads and powered their salvaged combat systems. A dozen in all, were now adopting a military formation. On piston legs and whirring servos, they assembled before adept Pollux.

"Initiate combat subroutine omega-kappa-pi." As one, the phalanx of lobotomized servitors banged metallic instruments of death against their chests. Pollux's neurochemistry lit up, triggering alarms and implanted suppressors. She turned them off with a mental command. She deserved to feel pride at the seemingly impossible task she had performed. She had defeated the protective cogno-locks and reset every servitor's base template to alter and activate new self-defense protocols. She allowed herself a moment of hubris.

The forge worlds' aptitude tests were said to be infallible. She had been earmarked to be a structural enginseer, but maybe she should have been a data scryer after all. Just as she had always wanted to be.

"The clock is ticking," reminded Remi to his fuming companion. He and Sola had been facilitating the evacuation process. Well, Sola mostly. Remi had seen fit to stand guard by her side in case the canny Eldar decided to show up early. He could hardly trust her pubescent bodyguard to manage, after all. Hot thermals washed out of a departing lighter's engine and buffeted the Nostromo's now sullied robes of office. Planets were so very filthy in Remi's opinion. Too much dirt.

"He's an idiot!" she grumbled.

"I've known that for a very long time now." The uncomfortable navigator eyed the throng of plebeians as they walked into a shuttle near him.

"Spare me your quips Remi, I have enough of Sigs to deal with at the moment."

"Is that why you brought that monstrosity along?" he pointed at the massive bolt rifle she had slung over her shoulder, it was practically as tall as her.

Sola glared up at him. He wisely decided not to press his characteristic humor any further.

"It's almost sun up," the navigator remarked. "Our time is almost up. So where is our foolish captain?" The Nostromo sidestep a wounded soldier whose seeping burn wounds where exuding a sickly sweet scent. He almost seemed to blame the man for his injuries.

"He's gone to visit Knuckles in the burned out supply storage. And before you say anything… I don't want to hear it"

Remi nodded, succinctly closing his mouth. Denied conversation, he turned to see what Sola's bodyguard was up to, and found the impassive visor of the child warrior's helm staring at him disapprovingly. Or he imagine that's what it was. He made mental note to add Chastity to the long list of people he should watch out for.

"Well, here we are Knucks." Sigismund was sitting on the ground by his friend's body. He had given the ratings hell when he found Knuckles tangled in a corner. Apparently, they hadn't thought highly of the ork. Sigismund couldn't blame them for it, a hatred of all things xeno was only natural, but he had held them accountable anyway. Sigismund had struggled to bring Knuckle's body outside, and into a shallow grave. The dying, honoring the death.

"I'm going to bury you out here, there's no telling what the Eldar's would do to your body if they found it. They didn't seem to like orks, but I guess no one does."

The mourning scion winced as he readjusted himself, the damn wound flared up every time he dared to ignore it. The Eldar's blade hadn't been powered. Just an old fashion dagger, they had told him, sharp enough to knick all sorts of things, and promise a slow painful death. But he hadn't died. No, Elamnyl had wanted him to see what would happen next, a helpless observer.

"The way I see it, if we can let a mutant like Remi waltz around, why not an ork who tamed his ways? It's not like you were plotting to kill us anyway. As long as I kept you away from your kind, you were rather reasonable really."

A mournful sigh sent fire up his spine. After a moment, he started dragging soil into the shallow grave. "Sure, you weren't easy to love. You were a tad bit insane, psychotically violent, and as the cult Mechanicus insisted, pathologically blasphemous. But that was in your nature wasn't it Knuckles. We can't escape our nature, can we? Emperor knows I tried."

The private rite was painstakingly long, Sigismund struggled with his wound while he buried his friend. He was the only one who cared enough to do it though, so he carried on.

"It was simple with you. I knew exactly what to do. Let you tinker on your trukk, point you towards a fight once in a while, and keep my hat on straight. In that sense, you were far more reliable than some of my blood kin. Don't get me wrong, I got a pretty damn good crew. Good friends, even. But it gets complicated when a charter of trade is involved. But you didn't care. Still, you probably would have killed me eventually. You were getting pretty big too, a regular nob by my count. So I guess things were bound to take this turn."

The indigo sky was slowly growing brighter, hues of blues heralding the coming red. There was going to be a lot of that soon. Sigismund groaned with the last effort of covering Knuckles' body with soil. It took him awhile to catch his breath after that, but by then, there was little left anyone could do.

"They're here!" screamed a panicked armsmen. Sigismund's men were out in force, a platoon manning each of the shaky flak walls surrounding the outpost. Fifty meters back from these positions, more were dug-in along hasty trenches to cover the fall back points and give retreating units a fighting chance. No one was under the illusion they would hold out under Eldar fire, all they could do is buy time for the overburdened lighters to keep up with the evacuation. A full third of the defenders were already extracted from the budding warzone, mostly injured or combat ineffective dynasty assets.

"A bit excessive don't you think?" Barr's corporal was grumbling at the sight of the advancing Eldar armor. Two full squadrons of grav tanks were suddenly materializing in the plains beyond the outpost. The bone-white and ivy-green falcon transports were skirting the outpost, their emerald trimming flashing by at incredible speed. The vehicles kited the defenses letting the wall-mounted heavy weapons expend their ammunition in a futile attempt to score a hit. Even the few autocannon shells, or the rare lascanon beam, which struck the transports hit without any noticeable effect against the transports' shimmering force shields.

"Can it, Ghul! I don't want to explain to his majesty how a sniveling runt like you made it into his elite corp. Now make him proud!"

The storm troopers had been spread along the walls to give it a bit more staying power. Armed with hellguns and melta charges, they were the most versatile fighting unit in this engagement. At the very least, the squads' weapon specialists would put their meltaguns to good use against the Eldar cavalry.

As the falcon grav tanks raked the walls with their mounted scatter lasers, shredding the imperial defenders at an alarming rate, larger skimmer tanks slipped from the far away woods. The fire prisms held their positions out of range from anything the defenders could muster against them, but well within the range of their devastating prism canons. With a whine of accumulated energy, audible even from a kilometer away, prismatic beams leapt from their large focusing crystals and laid waste to the outpost's gates and walls.

The defenders were being slaughtered without even being able to fight back, and that didn't sit well with Barr. He wasn't about to give his life up without taking at least a handful of xeno scum with him.

He gripped his shoulder mounted vox unit. "Fall back, all defenders under attack, fall back to your secondary positions." He quickly switched channels. "Alright boys, let the armsmen run. The enemy will press their advantage, lay low and slag those transport with melta charges!"

A chorus of acknowledgement crowded the vox channel. With a few quick hand gestures, Barr redistributed his squad along the remaining flak wall and down by the busted gates. Already, he could see the falcon grav tanks zipping towards the gaps in the imperial's defenses.

"Hold it boys… hold for it." Barr was making mental gymnastics trying to time his melta throw with the lightning fast skimmers. Any second now. The skimmers were only a few hundred meters away when they suddenly changed vectors. Any other vehicle would have been pushed by its momentum straight into the waiting storm trooper's trap, but these xeno transport put Barr's expectations to shame. They kited the walls again but this time they turned themselves around. Had it been a probing run?

A strange sensation overcame Barr, like being pulled towards something that wasn't there, until suddenly, it was. Standing beside him, its strange xeno weapons leveled at his head, an Eldar appeared in a shimmering curtain. The xeno was crouched low, a perfect oval dome shielding its back, with two bladed upper limbs and another pair pointing long tubular canons of sinuous design.

Instinct kicked in before he knew what he was doing. Barr threw himself off the 15 foot flak wall onto the ground below. Spindly webs of monofilament death gushed from the lower weapons and scoured the top of the flak wall as if it were made of paper. The impact robbed Barr of some of his dignity but allowed him to bring his weapon to bare and fire overcharged las bolts up at his foe. As quickly as it had appeared, the Eldar shimmered out of existence.

"Fool me twice…" Barr muttered to himself as he quickly threw himself into another combat roll. As predicted, the warp spider appeared from its warp jump and blasted the ground Barr had just quit. The green lenses of its conical helmet tracked his movement too late. The xeno rose its bladed limbs to protect itself as Barr's hellgun barked in his grip, superheated energy spearing through the delicate Eldar's body and setting the corpse a flame.

Barr's men had fared much more poorly against the surprise attack. Of his ten men squad, only four were still standing, a pitiful harvest of foes at their feet. "Fall back, you wretched wastes of skin!"

The troopers dropped and sprinted towards the backup trench lines, their heavy kits weightless by the kick of adrenaline they were riding. They barely made it past the sandbags and set up their heavy weapon that the falcon grav tanks made another appearance, this time penetrating the outpost's perimeter but scattering to the four winds. They either had more pressing objectives to secure or they were confident the defenders would be mopped up by their support units. Barr ducked into a trench as the armsmen unleashed unless salvos against the shielded tanks.

"We can't hurt them! Their shields are too powerful!" The weapons team weren't wrong. They weren't doing much more than eating up their ammunition.

"Sergeant, why won't they play fair?" Ghul was sporting that shit eating grin again. Barr ignored him and hunkered down to get a status report. At every fall back point, the story was the same. There had been surprise ambushes by warp spiders, followed by a quick retreat and a wave of falcon grav tanks completely ignoring the fall back points.

"Alright glory boys," voxed the sergeant. "Time to earn your paycheck, we're going armor hunting. Squads' primaris through quintus, ambush patterns along the wrecked buildings. You see a skimmer, you let the armsmen engage, then you stick a melta up those transports' arses when they're not looking! Barr out!"

Ghul tapped Barr on the shoulder and jerked his head in the direction of the ruined gates they had just abandoned. A sprinting unit of Eldars, shuriken pistols in one hand and glimmering power swords in the other, were heading straight for them.

"I was wondering when we were going to see some actual infantry…" grumbled the sergeant.

"Are those…. women?" added Ghul, moments before a howling shockwave hit him.

Far behind the advancing line of Eldar aspect warriors, their commander watched atop his serpent tank, a cadre of dire avenger's acting as his honor guard. The super heavy chassis housed a portable webway gate, insuring a near limitless supply of aspect warriors for the engagement ahead. The mon-keigh had done their best to destroy the gates closest to their outpost, but had even one survived across the breadth of the maiden world, the warhost would have arrived at the appointed hour. Nothing would stop the retribution of Biel-Tan, nothing ever had.

"Autarch Mauryon, I salute you." Elemnyl's singson tone was heavy as he knelt by the massive skimmer. Mauryon turned his attention to the pathfinder, his crested wings of emerald and bonewraith complimenting his regal psychoactive armor. The autarch had walked the paths of war for centuries, and serve within many of Biel-Tan's warrior shrines. His intimate knowledge of the Eldar way of war had served him well, and this outpost was as doomed as the many colonies he had persecuted in the craftworld's honor.

"Your rangers have done well, pathfinder. I am pleased with the result of their holo-field deployments and the advance strike they performed."

"Thank you autarch." Elamnyl lingered.

"I sense apprehension in you outcast. What boon may I offer for your timely discovery of this threat?" Close at hand, the warlock who led the autarch's honor guard observed the discussion quizzically.

The pathfinder took a deep breath, knowing what ire he would summon in the ardent commander.

"I have slain an ork by their primitive communication array, I thought you should be advised."

The autarch's response dripped with the venom he reserved for the great befoulers. "Does the foolishness of the mon-keigh know no bounds? To bring a greenskin to our perfect world. I pray the creature did not shed spores elsewhere than where it fell… Although your concerns are valid Elamnyl, we will scour the land where these foolish creatures have thread. You know this, so I suggest you unburden your mind outcast, for I have a force to direct."

"Yes, great autarch. Uliassen, one of the rangers who walked the path with me, succumbed to the wounds he suffered during the night. It was their leader which dealt them. I wish your permission to enter the field of battle and seek out the head of he who is yours to claim."

The autarch inclined his head imperceivably, knowing well what this meant to Elamnyl, a gesture of deep sympathy for the bereaved. None but an Eldar's sharp senses could have noticed it. Without further words, the pathfinder left, long las in hand. Vengeance was a terrible emotion to bare, but Elamnyl feared his psyche would never rest unless he brought his son's killer to task. Such turmoil would undoubtedly lead him into She-Who-Thirst's embrace. How easy it was to play into her jealous hands, thought the pathfinder. He risked losing himself both in the intensity of vengeance, or the anguish of inaction. Without an aspect to shield his soul, an outcast was truly alone in the galaxy.

He had fully expected to die, but the Emperor had seen fit to let him linger on the battle field a while longer. Barr pushed himself to his feet, the cauterized wound bisecting his carapace armor making him grit his teeth. Around him, an entire platoon's worth of armsmen laid in various state of dismemberment.

The Eldar had wade into them without remorse. One instant, the he and the armsmen fired into their weaving formation, and the next, every man was struggling to extend his life for a few more seconds.

"Look who decided to come back to life." Ghul was busying himself with dressing his severed stump of an arm. The corporal sported multiple cuts and his dark uniform was spotting with bleeding shuriken hits. Even sitting, he was swaying drunkenly, a sure sign of hypovolemic shock. None the less, the storm trooper was soldiering on, doing his best to cover his wounds.

"Of all the unpleasant bastards to survive, it had to be you, huh Ghul…" Barr winced as he lifted his hefty hellgun. The Eldars had hit like an incoming storm, heralded by their piercing shriek. It had stabbed through Barr's head like a cold knife and slowed his reaction time just enough to let them close in with their wicked blades. The defenders of the fall back point had all be cut into ribbons before even putting up a fight. The fight was lost before it had even started.

Ghul nodded and wobbled up onto his feet, Barr steadying him. "You combat effective trooper?"

The mouthy corporal shrugged. "Does it matter sarg? I'll fight. It won't be pretty, but if I can at least payback one of those bitches, it'll be good." Barr didn't need to see Ghul's face under his helm's plate to know the cheeky bastard was smirking. A life time of training with the ugly bastard had made the storm trooper intimately aware of his habits.

The whine of a grav tank reached them. It was time for them to go. A quick check of their equipment, and the two wounded troopers disappeared into the ruins of the burned out outpost as the Eldar's mop up crew slowly edged its way beyond the now largely ineffective outpost perimeter. Tight groups of ivy-green clad Eldars were moving in, going from building to building with their smooth shuriken catapults in hand. The sight of their tall conical helms, topped with martial crests, send shivers down Barr's spine. They were lithe and fast, almost acrobatic in their movements, and clinical in a way the storm trooper could only aspire to be. On over watch, falcon tanks scanned the byways of the ruined outpost with their twin linked scatter laser. This wasn't a war, Barr thought, it's an extermination.

Somehow, he and Ghul would have to move towards the landing pads. Constantly keeping themselves between the slowly advancing forces now tightening the noose, and the furiously fast warrior women who had made them look like shiny recruits. Barr prayed he could make a good account of himself before the end, but mostly, he prayed he wouldn't see the captain on the way. For his sake.

Elamnyl flitted over the steps of the mon-keigh's administration building. Its crude and angular design pained his delicate sense of aesthetics. How the humans could live in such singularly ugly structures was beyond him, with their unloving machines and their stiff uniforms. He stepped into the morning light as he took to the structure's higher levels, his long las carried softly in his grasp. Dark reapers were strewed across the vantage point, hefting their heavy shuriken catapults and reaper missile launchers to the ready. Their leader, an exarch with the spirit stones of his predecessor adorning his ornate armor, cast him a passing glance.

The reapers had come here for the same reason Elamnyl had. From this position, they could lay down devastating fire on any enemy unlucky enough to fall within their sights. Mauryon's deployments were without fault. From the moment the engagement had begun, hundreds of the mon-keigh had died, and as far as the pathfinder knew, only a handful of Eldars had shared their fate. Every Eldar life was precious, too few of the ancient race remained. Elamnyl should not have felt the death of one ranger any more keenly than that of his brethren, but he did.

As the pathfinder climbed the last of the ladders leading to the structure's roof, he boiled with unrestrained anger. Long ago, the Eldar race had been masters of the galaxy, but their own decadence had lain them low. Unbound by any restraints, their indulgences had led to the birth of an entity so vile, so thirsty, that their race was still haunted by its desire to consume them. The Eldar's highly psychic nature was at once their greatest gift and their greatest curse. The fall had left them spread and splintered. The craftworlds had been protective arks for the few who knew of their peril, safeguarding their souls. The exodites, on the other hand, had survived far away from the nexus of the Eldar home worlds, the crystal matrix grown within the worlds they inhabited acting like the craftworld's infinity circuit. The webway itself had even shielded a great number of them, unrepentant to this day, within the great city of Commoragh. Those were the dark kin, and no hope remained for them and their depravity.

Elemnyl slowly approached the edge of the brutish building and looked on, in the near distance, at the last sign of human resistance. The autarch had herded them into that last desperate place. Whether he intended to slaughter them all, or allow a few to escape and tell the tale of their utter defeat, was still unsure. It was not the pathfinder's place to ask, either, for an outcast had no place.

The Eldars of the craftworlds had, in the wisdom of Asurmen the first phoenix lord, learned to limit the psychic strains of life by adopting the paths. In this way, they could contain and limit the malignant effects of their overstimulation and its powerful echoes in the warp. Almost as importantly, it kept their traces few and faint, least the hungry god rip their souls from their still living flesh. Within the insulated bone wraith hulls of the craftworlds, striving to discipline their lives against excess, and protected by the spirit stones which hid their souls from She-Who-Thirsts upon death, the Eldars had managed to delay their extinction.

It had been a bitter sweet day when Elamnyl had met Uliassen in his meandering. Knowing at once that his son had abandoned the paths and set out into the galaxy as his father had done before him. The path of the outcast was not a true path. It was the abandonment of the stringent way of life all craftworld Eldars lived. It was to set your will against temptation and excess without partitioning your psyche. To be cast out from your people and risk becoming a frightful creature of impulse. Often embraced by the young, it was seen as a passing rebellion, a learning experience, which would convince the Eldar of the necessity of the paths. Those who walked its winding roads for too long became tainted by its strain, frightening to their more tamed kin. Elamnyl was one of those, no longer simply a ranger exploring the galaxy. He was a pathfinder, doomed to wander the galaxy. He had once feared his son would also become one, in time. It no longer was his concern.

Strangely, Elamnyl was not unlike the aspect warriors known as exarch. Those Eldars who succumbed to their paths and became bound to it forevermore. Those few souls also lived in solitude from their kin, hidden in their temples and training those who sought to walk the paths of war. These high priests only left their hallowed shrines to slay the craftworld's enemies, living embodiments of Kaela Mensha Khaine, the bloody handed god of war.

Elamnyl now stroked his son's luminescent spirit stone in his palm. He should not have taken it with him, and risk his son's soul before it could be transferred to Biel-Tan's infinity circuit, the web of souls which kept the Eldar from being devoured by the dark one. There were many things Elamnyl had done in his life. Perhaps, he could yet make peace with one of them.

"Forgive me brave Uliassen, I should never have left you behind. I should have sent you to the craftworld. Please forgive me for what I must do, for I fear I may be lost either way."

The spirit stone warmed in his palm, sadness and pity radiating from it in equal part. The pathfinder slipped the stone along the stock of his rifle, the psychic bonewraith shifting to accommodate it in its embrace. "You will soon be at one with the craftworld, my son. But allow me this indulgence first."

Barr and Ghul had made it as far as the burned out supply depot, hiding within its shell. They were close to the evacuation zone now. The sergeant had expected to run into the banshees by now, but they had disappeared as surely as the morning mist. Everything he knew about warfare made him question the ease with which they had made progress. The Eldars had overwhelming numbers. They had broken their backs and swept through the outpost with shameful ease. A good commander would have used the momentum of his attack to push through the gathered imperial forces and won the engagement. So why haven't hadn't they?

Ghul was starting to fade, his movements languid and heavy. Barr's own wounds made him gasp for breath and shiver in cold sweats. They shouldn't have made it this close to their extraction point, by no stretch of the imagination. So what was the xenos playing at? It put him in mind of a feline playing with its prey.

"Ghul…stay with me. We're almost there. Only a few hundred meters." The trooper had fared well despite his system shock. A soldier half his salt would have been dead by now. Barr patted the man's shoulder to let him know it was time to move up. Ghul struggled to get out of the cover they had used to hide. The sergeant moved at a crouch, cover to cover, and took a knee by the depot's exterior wall, now riddle with holes. Two shuttles were on the lift plate a ways beyond a stretch of open ground. Armsmen milled around them in make shift fortifications, behind a line of jacked up servitors. Almost there…

Barr looked back to give Ghul the all clear when a shadow dropped into view. "Ghul! Get down!" The wounded soldier collapsed instead of going to ground, but the effect was the same. Barr unleashed a salvo of tight las fire taking the shadow into the chest. Glowing puncture wounds riddle the Eldar's chest plate and the xeno dropped the serrated chain sword he had been poised to use of Ghul.

A soft purring whirr was all Barr heard before his hellgun was sheered from his grasp and a flash of dark green overpowered him. He fell in a tussle, grasping with his ambusher for dominance. The Eldar were fast, but they lacked the brute strength Barr had cultivated during years of weight training in the _Semper Fidelis_' barracks. The storm trooper rolled onto his opponent and smashed his elbow down on its conical helm. Cracked ruby red lenses started back at Barr as he managed to stun the creature with sheer bludgeoning force. The Eldar's head lolled as the trooper quickly stabbed his combat knife in the damaged helm and pushed it down to the hilt. The xeno convulsed, and then stilled.

The fight wasn't over, not by a long shot. Ghul, now back on his teetering legs, was struggling to keep another one of the strange ambusher at bay with his one good arm, batting away at the flat of the curved chain sword with his palm. Ghul was living on borrowed time, a fact that became painfully obvious to him the moment a badly timed swat sent a chunk of his hand flying in a gory mess. The corporal screamed and fell onto his back, blood gushing from the three severed fingers his good hand had lost.

Barr charged the Eldar, high on adrenaline, and tackled him to the ground. His grip around the svelte creature slipped, sending him into an awkward roll as the Eldar twisted. With contemptuous ease, the ambushing xeno riddled the prone Ghul with a salvo of shuriken slivers from a pistol he had suddenly produced and immediately pressed his advantage. A flurry of blows buzzed by Barr's body as he rolled away and rose into a combat crouch. At the edge of Barr's mind, he could hear Ghul gurgling his last breath and falling silent.

Barr knew the odds were against him, but he decided he wasn't going to give the xeno the satisfaction of an easy kill. The storm trooper unclipped two grenades from his harness as the Eldar charged. Barr let them fly, perilously close, and bet everything he had on the xeno doing what it did best.

Stopping on a dime, the acrobatic Eldar twisted and threw itself into a graceful pirouette, clearing the blast zone easily, and spat bright las fire from its crackling mandibles. That took Barr by surprise, who had simply assumed the things were ornamental. The rounds scored along his face plate as he threw himself into a flying tackle and slammed into the air born Eldar. They both crashed onto the ground in a heap, but this time the xeno couldn't get away. Barr quickly took hold of the fighter's arm and locked it, forcing the scything edge of the chain sword to start chewing into its armor.

The mandibles sparked again. Barr threw his head aside, tucking it into his opponent's neck as he brought all his weight to bare and pressed the chewing weapon deep into the eldar's chest. The struggle was brief, but bloody.

As Barr rolled off the still bleeding corpse, he threw his helmet off. His face was on fire and he couldn't breathe. The sight in his right eye was blurry, as if swollen, and he realized some of the mandiblasts had made it through and cratered the right side of his face. He laid still, chest heaving, the sealed wound of the banshee's sword now open and wetting his chest.

"St…op, sleeping…on the job," croaked the butchered corporal a few meters away.

Barr crawled over to Ghul as quickly as he could, ripping bandages from his field kit as he went. "Of all the unpleasant bastards..."

The corporal laughed faintly, blood splattering his teeth and chin from the effort. "Save those…dressings," he wheezes, his lungs collapsing. "I'm going to go a…ahead, and tell the Emperor…" Ghul coughed violently as Barr tried to cradle his head, the sergeant instinctively trying to staunch the dying man's blood. "About… the time, you got us lost… in hive Fiori's sump system."

Barr shook his head at the memory. They had wandered those shit caked tunnels for nearly a week. The war already won and their squad designated as missing in action. They had missed the entire cult's suppression on that front.

"I…I think…he'll…lau…"

Ghul's body wracked in a bloody fit before he fell silent, and limp.

"You always were a blasphemous gakker Ghul. If I catch you telling that story when I get there. You'll die a second time today, you hear."

Barr folded the dead man's arms into the sign of the Aquila and got himself up. Just a few hundred meters. Almost there.

But… then what?

Sola watched the last two shuttles lift off. "Toth is inbound, he'll make touch down in approximately 20 minutes. He'll be the last shuttle, Sigs." She was still cradling the monstrous angevin bolt rifle in her hands. The captain nodded. The evacuation was all but over. One last platoon of armsmen remained to defend the landing pad and Sigs retinue. Only a handful of storm troopers had made it to the extraction site, none in good shape. Keever hovered protectively by his liege's side, mirrored by Chastity a few steps away. Spread along the last of the fortifications were adept Pollux's servitors, heavily modified for combat operations.

"Storm trooper incoming!" Bellowed the bosun in charge of the last firing line. Out in the open field, a wounded trooper was throwing himself into a limping run. He seemed to have lost his rifle and helmet. Behind him, advancing slowly, was a squadron of grav tanks. The lighter ones skirted the edge of their formation while the heavier ones, with their large focusing crystals, hovered comfortably out of range. Behind them, a wall of aspect warriors took their position.

Sigs had taken the time to read up on his foes. Dire avengers made up most of their numbers, supported by howling banshees and the odd striking scorpion. Warp spiders were perched on the bones of the outpost's buildings and the rangers were nowhere to be seen, but that was hardly surprising. Here and there, Eldar warlocks led certain units. Fewer still were the highly bejeweled exarchs, with the banners and holy wargear of their shrine. It seems the xenos had finally finished toying with them and were ready to deal the final blow.

Sigismund smirked, "a bit excessive, don't you think?"

"No, this is exactly what I told you would happen," spat Sola unhappily.

"She did," agreed Remi, always at her side.

Barr was halfway to the landing pad when a flurry of shuriken forced him to the ground. From impossibly far way, a top the administratum prefab, a storm of suppressing fire covered the vulnerable storm trooper's immediate surroundings. Despite the deluge, Barr was dragging himself arm over arm towards the last imperial position. Small puffs of blood jetted into the air where the occasional shuriken hit him, their extreme range robbing them of most of their kinetic energy. It would be a slow and painful death if Sigs didn't do something.

"It's a trap," Keever stated matter-of-factly.

"It's not like they need the advantage," muttered the captain.

"Pollux, send the servitors out." The adept acquiesced with a blurt of high pitched binary. As one, the soulless machine men set out under enemy fire. As a whole, the Eldar lines fired, a storm of blade lashed at their unfeeling flesh, torrents of molecular thin shavings digging into their bodies or ricocheting off the heavy metal plates bolted to their iron bones. As they reached the stranded soldier, more of their numbers fell. Sigs' retinue looked on as the most resilient of their assets were torn to shreds slowly. The servitors formed a phalanx around their living objective and began their ponderous trek back.

The point of no return had been reached, it was too late to call the walking bulkwards off and their commitment to the task would doom the majority of their numbers. Arching micro missiles designed to punch through the thickest of armor rained down on them, launched by the dark reapers atop the last standing building in the outpost, the operational headquarters. The warheads detonated, wrecking the servitors in their retreat. When finally Barr had been taken into relative safety, all but three damaged servitors remained.

"Seems you played straight into their hands, captain," smirked Remi. The gathering glares of those around him caught him by surprise. "What? Was it something I said?"

The last planet side corpsman was now tending to the pale storm trooper. It bothered Sigs that for all their lightning quick strikes against his defenses, their assault had all but come to a halt.

"What are they waiting for?" growled the anxious captain.

The silence persisted. The wind brought to the defenders the scent of war and death, of fire and heavy ion discharge. Still, the warhost stood still as death. Sigismund strode off the landing pad, with its armored shutters raised, and hopped down the plasteel steps as fast as his pierced abdomen allowed.

"Sigs, wait," Sola pleaded, and to her surprise, he did. He stood eerily still as the renewed scent of burning flesh washed over his retinue. Then, he toppled off the stairs and out of sight.

The world seemed to slow as his tricorne hat twisted in the wind and landed by Sola's feet. The sound of pounding metal boots surrounded her as Keever's billowing cape suddenly obscured her sight in his passing. Sola was unable to process what she had witness to any satisfying degree, all the while Chastity's panicked voice echoed in her ear. She was dragged forcefully to the cold metal floor, head swimming from its meeting with the unyielding surface. She heard with ridiculous clarity the shuffling of Remi's robes as he took shelter by her side. Then the world exploded into life again.

"Sigs!" howled Sola as Chastity shielded the vice factotum with her power armored body, pinning her in place.

Across the open plain, Biel-Tan's warhost advanced in a wave of ivy-green and wraith bone white. Fire Prisms chewed the feeble fortifications apart with blasts of prismatic light; falcon tanks washed the remains with scatter laser, shredding bodies indiscriminately; aspect warriors of every shrine surged forward, their fire unerringly true on the move, promising carnage and an artful death by blade and catapult alike; beyond the sight of human beings, rangers and dark reapers spat death from afar, targeting heavy weapon emplacement and servitors with vicious accuracy.

Sigismund's armsmen were pinned by fire. The Eldars would reach them in a matter of seconds, but despite this, they fired from their cover, or threw grenades blindly in an attempt to slow the storm of blades. Autocannons chattered loudly, heavy stubbers sprayed, and the occasional shoulder mounted launcher screamed as it unleashed its fragmentation payload. The servants of the dynasty were ready to lay down their lives for their captain, whose fall had ironically gone unnoticed against the coming tempest.

The armored bulk of the master of arms dropped beside the fallen lord. The ravenkin had been shot in the chest, the burnt hole of the las round deceptively small. With a grunt, the feudal knight hefted his master into his arms and used his body to shield the scion. Projectiles whirled by his head, their sibilant whispers cursing his every step. Keever's cloak hung in tatters as he climbed the steps of the landing pad bereft of cover, the sharp bite or occasional ping reminding him of how ineffectual his armor was against Eldar weaponry. Keever finally settled behind the armored crenellation of the landing pad, laying his lord down carefully.

"I know not whether he lives! Tend to him!" ordered the warlord before he drew his sword from his scabbard and thundered back down the stairs. Sola finally ripped herself from Chastity's power assisted grasp and crawled over to the supine captain, Eldar fire shimmering over the thick shutters. Her bodyguard was about to follow when Remi held her back.

"There's nothing you can do for her now, except buy her time." Remi eyed the virgin guard with intent. The young girl, to her credit, understood. She settled against a shutter and racked the slide of her godwyn pattern boltgun before rising from her cover and blazing away. Shot after shot streamed from her weapon, the brilliant muzzle flare endowing her with an artificial halo of light. Her elevated position allowed her to fire over the armsmen's head, who were moments from being overrun, but remained resolute by Keever's unflinching example.

Sola frantically worked over Sigismund, looking for signs of life. With a frustrated scream, she wiped the tears welling in her eyes and bend low over him. Her lips kissed his in a desperate attempt to share her breath. Quickly, she recalled the rites of vitae and clasped her hands above his heart, pumping it with her ministrations. She cursed the fools name as she opened his mouth again and gave him life.

Amongst them, the last few remaining storm troopers took defensive positions. Barr, slumping behind cover while his brothers added their fire to the unflinching virgin guard's, he eyed the prone Sigismund with conflicting hatred. But his concerns washed away as enemy fire intensified against a rather lively tech adept, whose mechadendrites spat fat sparks. A shuriken caught her in the knee, casting her down onto the platform. Barr quickly reached over and pulled her in by the hem of her priestly robes, his blood starved hands shaking with the effort.

At the base of the landing platform, the Eldar had swarmed around the remaining defenders, finding in Keever and the implacable servitors a last valiant obstacle. He cleaved the spritely xenos with his power sword and forced them away for a few more moments. A squad of dire avengers circumvented the brutal swordsman and sprinted up the steps of the landing platform. Remi was waiting for them.

The navigator ripped the last vestige from his brow and unfurled his true eye. For a moment, Remi became a wellspring of warp energy. As the maelstrom broiled into real space, the Eldar were caught in its wake, the hungry horror they dreaded laughing with lustful abandon as She-Who-Thirsts claimed their souls. So sudden were their death, so horrible and saturated by the touch of the warp, that their spirit stones availed them naught. As suddenly as it had begun, the Eldars crumbled, soul fire still licking at their empty shells. Remi shivered with the power coursing through his eye.

"Behold," he whispered to the world, "I am become death." Remi couldn't recall the fragment of ancient lore he had summoned to his lips, but he remembered it was synonymous with the death of an era. How fitting, he smirked. The navigator walked down the still burning steps and unleashed the unfathomable hell living in the depths of the warp. In swaths, he laid the Eldar low, and unfortunate armsmen besides. The catastrophic destruction he had wrought, and the singular horror which every Eldar now sensed through resonance, forced the surrounding attackers to disengage.

Keever ripped his blade from the sucking wound that had inflicted, and kicked the lifeless Eldar's body away. He had turned to face his next opponent, when he realized the warhost had receded. Bodies burned with unholy light, and amongst them, stood the untouched silhouette of Remi Nostromo, now pulling his hood over the dreaded navigator's eye.

Above them, the screeching roar of tortured metal signaled the arrival of the last shuttle. Keever nodded in thanks as he passed the Nostromo and took to the landing pad steps two at a time. Before Remi, a wall of cautious Eldar inched away, their hidden eyes bathing him in visceral hatred. So close to the landing pad, the abomination was well out of range of the Eldar's sniper support. Yet, he remained close enough that the use of more volatile ordinance would undoubtedly hit their own. The navigator and the Eldar were at a standstill, but for how long?

"By now, the _Semper Fidelis _is no doubt in orbital bombardment range," lied Remi to the host. "Our death will no doubt incur the warship's wrath. It seems you waited too long xenos, now I suggest you move along." Remi dismissed the host with a flick of his sinuous hand, "even you can't outrun what's coming."

As if receiving a silent signal, the Eldar broke into a rapid retreat, their tanks backing off as surely as their infantry. Remi was actually surprised that his bluff had worked. He let out a long shuddering sigh of relief. He walked back to the platform, a glinting polearm catching his eye. It's organic design and bejeweled shaft was disturbingly beautiful. If his lore was correct, it had all the markings of an execution spear, a banshee exarch's weapon. He cast a glance at his surroundings and grinned. He deserved a trophy, surely. With a grace rivaling the Eldars' own, he flitted up the stairway and into safety of the waiting shuttle. The plundered weapon warm in his grasp.

Atop the administratum building, Elamnyl remained in his braced position. He had witness the devastating assault of his kin on the filthy mon-keigh. He had witness the unexpected reversal at the hands of the mutant. And when he had been ordered by Mauryon to slay the fiend, he had been too distraught to comply.

The pathfinder could have made the shot. It was at the edge of his effective range, he had proven that moments before by killing the mon-keigh's leader. Only, he hadn't killed him. He knew deep down his aim had been untrue.

Elamnyl caressed his long las, pondering the meaning of this strange occurrence. He had held the offending mon-keigh in his sights. The long las had powered up to the required output for a long range shot. He had waited for the most opportune time to take his revenge, and when it had come, he had held the psychically attuned weapon unerringly still. So why had his shot gone astray? Why, then, had the weapon twitched in his grasp at exactly the wrong moment.

The pathfinder ran his nimble fingers over Uliassen's spirit stone. Had this been his doing? The stone was silent. He could no longer feel his son stirring within. Even the stone's inner light seemed somewhat reluctant to shine. Elemnyl was no spirit seer, he could not directly commune with those who had passed on. He had believed, before, that he could reach out to Uliassen. Perhaps it had been the opposite, and his son had reached out to him instead. If so, it appeared his son had no more to say.

The pathfinder left his perch. He walked under the disapproving eyes of the dark reapers still holding the gantries. He passed by the warriors, in all their aspects, retreating hurriedly from the outpost. He had even walked on, unimpeded by any of his kind, as the gaze of the mighty autarch settled on his back.

Elamnyl was a pathfinder. Doomed to wander the galaxy. He had always found a way, and he was confident he would again, in his unending search for the enemies of Biel-Tan. Only, for the first time in many centuries, he didn't know where to start.

Elamnyl looked to his rifle, the soft light nestled in its stock shimmering anew, and disappeared into the wilds of the maiden world.

"You let them escape," remarked Tenzin, the warlock who led Mauryon's honor guard. The Eldar were in full retreat now, filling into the wave serpent's open webway gate to return to the craftworld.

"I always intended some of them to carry the burden of their sacrilege." The regal commander watched as the _Bahzhakhaine_ returned home. No, in truth, it had only been a gale, and not the true storm. The mon-keigh had needed nothing more to be dealt with.

"We could have at least killed the mutant, his bluff was a thin attempt at subterfuge. No true son of Biel-Tan would have hesitated to give his life."

"It is not their lives I was reticent to sacrifice, but their souls. It does not serve our people to feed She-Who-Thirst so willingly." The autarch gazed up to the heavens, to the primitive ship the mon-keigh called their own. "His bluff will become reality if we linger. Today was a solemn day. The mutant's power was an unforeseen misfortune but he will not live to repeat his affront a second time."

Tenzin drew the robes of his calling tighter around his armor. Far too many Eldars had fallen today. Every single life snuffed was an incalculable loss. "What of Elamnyl? He lacked the focus to resolve this issue before it grew out of hand."

Mauryon turned his gaze towards the wilds the pathfinder had lost himself in. "He is an outcast. The burden of his failure is his to carry. That will be shame enough. For now."

The day had witness many sights. The sun had risen on the scurrying of frightened beings and ended with enough blood to flood the plain. Eldar and Human alike had wet the soil's appetite until it no longer drank their life's blood. Fire and war had cleanse its surface, and even if it was but a brief flicker compared to the long history of its kind, it had left echoes. Rage, fear, desperation, and the unbridled will to live had left its mark, and for those capable of feeding on its tremors, it had been enough.

Darkness coalesced into pain; pain into confusion; confusion into anger; anger into will; and will into freedom. As the darkness parted to light, the growling mind of an insatiable warrior rose to life, and to purpose. The war mind wandered, pleased with the destruction wrought about it and infinitely saddened at its passing. It was alone. There were no faraway, buzzing impulse; nor restraints on its boundless urges. It was alone, and strangely free. But one question remained.

"Oye! Where'd every bodyz go?"


	8. Chapter 8

_**Into the Breach:**_

_**Part 8**_

"The portside lighter bay reports the last shuttle is safely on board commander!" Bargast clicked his heels as he addressed Evangeline, his very being stiff and pressed to naval standards, except for his bushy mutton chops. The Master of Ordinance awaited the commander's dismissal and then turned on his heels to head for his station, where half a dozen midshipmen attended the cogitator banks which fed Bargast the information pertaining to his office.

"Mister Ito, please bring us about." Evangeline watched the heading slowly tick away as the Master Helmsman wrangled the _Semper Fidelis'_ wheel. The captain's display swam with data sprites, but the young officer was beginning to feel at ease with their constant hurrying. The old warhorse was turning tail from the planet below. Perhaps it was the incessant rambling of the crew, but Evangeline started to pick up on the subtle signs of the ship's displeasure. It groaned a little louder when it was commanded to run from a fight. Just like Evangeline's older brother. She caught herself wondering if Sigismund had picked it up the habit from the ship, or if the two were simply of the same mind.

"Commander," urged the Master of Etherics, seeking her attention. "All auguries report silence. There is no sign of the enemy within our active auspex range." Johnston had taken the liberty of insuring the _Semper Fidelis_ would not be caught with her skirt in a bunch while the evacuation had proceeded. The veteran officers of the dynasty knew what was expected of them, and compared to an Imperial navy ship where acting without orders would have been considered a crime, it was welcomed as long as it did not interfered with the commanding officer's plans.

Evangeline was thankful for it. It had allowed her to master her craft without constantly looking the fool, learning from her command crew's actions in addition to her studies of the unending tomes of the Tactica Imperialis.

"Thank you Johnston, keep an eye out for me." The officer saluted and returned to his post. Despite the ability to communicate all relevant information by data communion from terminal to terminal, the command crew often displaced themselves to inform their commanding officer. It had been tradition ever since the 14th captain of the _Semper Fidelis_, great grand Uncle Joseph Lucius, who had remarked to an ensign that the measure of a man laid in his ability to give bad news. The quote had stuck, and there after the officers of the warship had taken a fierce pride in meeting their captain's gaze whenever reporting.

The Mistress of the Vox bowed low before Evangeline. Her eyes were cold and her beautiful voice was robbed of all its mellifluent warmth. The two women's gaze met. "Commander, I regret to inform you that your brother, our captain, has fallen to enemy fire."

Evangeline's throat tightened as she tried to swallow. Sigs getting shot was not out of the ordinary, but Eloquell's unflinching gaze implied something which turned the commander's blood to ice.

"H-How bad is it?" A panic she had not felt in a long while started to claw its way back from the pit of Evangeline's stomach. The specter of crippling doubt, of confidence loss, of crushing responsibility.

"My lady, as of a few minutes ago, the Lord Captain's heart has ceased to beat."

The shuttle had pierced the maiden world's atmosphere like a dart. It speared through the cold empty void, hull settling like an old man's bones, and powered on towards the waiting warship. The Arvus lighter's landing claws had barely touched the bay's deck that Barbanus' boarding ramp dropped and a slew of wounded armsmen stomped down its length. Despite their wounds, they urgently carried a stretcher between them, hustling as if the Gellar field had malfunctioned whilst deep in the warp.

The armsmen settled their dying commander on the deck and backed off for the waiting medicae. The auxiliaries, their equipment at hands, checking for signs of life, ripping Sigismund's clothes apart, and piercing his skin with intravenous needles hooked to clear plastek pharmacopeia bags. Standing above them, leaning heavily on her old augmented leg, chief surgeon Magda barked orders to her underlings. A lit lho stick dangling from her lips, the ex-field medic instructed hands far more nimble than hers to save the captain from the teetering edge he rested on.

A few feet away was the chief bosun, ordering her armsmen to clear a priority passage to the medicae bay. With a prod of her shock maul, she redirected the lighter bay ratings from the grim scene playing before them. With all the fire she was renowned for, Ribella the Red promised unending excruciation to the man foolish enough to get in the way. Moments after, the medicae crew was already leaving the bay with their charge, the old medic limping behind them.

Corpsmen, far less skilled in the healing arts, remained in the bay to perform a quick triage of the wounded leaving the shuttle. Vice factotum Villaneuva was seated on a cargo hauler, her hands still stained with blood from her vitae rites, having a lumen stick flashed in her tired eyes. The corpsman balanced the knife's edge between misdiagnosing an officer of the top brass, and annoying her to the point of having his service record spiral into oblivion. The Nostromo at her side patted her shoulder, exchanging what looked to be compassionate words, and took his leave. Sola's bodyguard, miraculously untouched by the battle they had escaped, seemed to eye the corpsman's hands with distrust as they moved along her mistress' body.

Ribella made her way through the largely empty lighter bay. The ratings had finally been dispersed and only the deck captain and his immediate subordinates remained in the control station protruding from the bay wall. The warning lights were twirling, the atmospheric shield bathing the dock's open maw in an electric amber. The heavy armored shutters closed ponderously and soon sealed the lighter bay, make it reasonably safe to walk about. Normally, the procedure would have been followed before allowing crew and passengers to disembark, but the captain's fate justified the risk. The chief stood at attention by her superior, who's now naked torso twitched muscularly as the corpsman stitched the numerous cuts his back had suffered retrieving his master.

"Master of Arms," prompted the enforcer.

Legatus Keever grunted at the mannish woman, seemingly preoccupied by something.

"Should we be expecting boarding parties? I need to know what our situation is if I am to prepare the men." She stood at ease, her hands clasp together against the small of her back, her thick arbites carapace hiding her body under ambiguous slabs of ceramite.

The Master at Arms finally seemed to recognize her. "If they would have wanted us dead, the foe would have cut us down while we still stood on their world." The feudal worlder was sitting on a fuel-mule, inured to the danger of having hundreds of litres of promethium under his backside. The attending corpsman pulled a shagged sliver of metal from Keever's flesh, the wound bleeding freely. The warlord twitched, not entirely caring, and returned Ribella's waiting gaze.

"And the rest of them," she gestured with her hand at the survivors, adept Pollux, Barr, and the vice factotum amongst them. "Are they going to be allowed to walk around after this? Need I remind you of the sensitive nature of this situation? This is going to hit moral hard and I've had enough of one mutiny this year. Permission to take measures to curtain the possibility of insurrection my lord!"

Keever nodded in acknowledgment, the chief bosun saluted in return and made ready to depart. "Leave vice factotum Villaneuva out of these… precautions. Should the ravenkin live, he would disapprove."

The enforcer frowned. "The vice factotum has far too many privileges as it stand. She even has clearance on my secure channels. It would be a mistake to allow her to stand head and shoulder above her station," Ribella warned.

"Leave her… out of it." repeated the growling warhorse. The chief bosun nodded, reluctantly this time, and took her leave. Beside them, the corpsman did his best to ignore the conversation and sewed up the last of Keever's wounds.

The ladies presented their hand coyly, and the gentlemen took them gratefully. Curtsies and bows were exchanged, and instruments sang to life. The carefully measured steps of the gathered nobles matched the rhythm of the waltz and the dance began in earnest. The gilded ballroom of the Trevin estate was host to the regimental dance. Tonight the officers of the five newly founded regiments danced, for tomorrow they left for the stars and the Emperor's most distant domains.

Jangling crystal chandeliers hung almost weightlessly from the great vaulted ceiling. Golden light shone down on the august personages, who dressed in their finest hussar uniforms and tasselled epaulettes, adorned their chest with colored sashes and glittering medals of obscure origin. Sabers rested on hips from silver and platinum chains, while gloved hands ceremoniously held their partner's from a respectable distance.

A few women wore uniforms instead of dresses, following in the onetime steps of Josephine Della, and boldly stepped up to the patricians as rivals instead of wives. Ironically, the woman they emulated did not wear the Persephonian blue. Rather, she wore a wondrously laced creation. A spider web of glittering pearls which rested upon a billowing cloud of pure silken white. Her stylish corset, trimmed with silvered thread, sparkles with the ensemble, but remained a pale match for the diamond tears which rested on her naked breast. Her swan like neck arched gracefully, unimpeded by the weight of her golden coif, which was tightly wound in a braided bun resting behind her head. But for all the marvels of the man-wrought artifice, it was her stormy grey eyes that struck her partner as the most beautiful of her possessions.

As the first measure of the waltz quieted and the couples walked at each other's side with graceful poise, Trevin cast Della a playful glance. Their relationship had bloomed during the last year. What had once been a competitive hate-laced officer/enlisted affair had become one of mutual respect. Over a decade of loss and guilt, Della's respect had become admiration. Over the same decade, Trevin's had become yearning. On the day they were reunited, neither knew of each other's passion. Quickly, however, the sanguine nature of their feelings had melted through the proper pomp of circumstances to become affection.

It was amidst this affection that they had undertaken to become the hero's the Persephonian people had claimed them to be, and use their newfound standing in the Emperor's name. Aristocrats loved their fairy tales, for what else were the chronicles of their righteous ancestors, and the impossible task they had overcome in the name of His-Most-Holy-Majesty. To the aristo, Augustus and Josephine had been torn apart by war, and finally reunited after a decade of unflinching faith. It was too good not to embellish. Added to the budding saga was the tale of the Persephonian 1st, whose sacrifice in the valiant war effort had guaranteed a faraway victory. As far as the Departmento Munitorum was concerned, the 1st was praised highly to sector command and glory rained down on the noble houses. It only took the star crossed lover's acknowledgement of this interpretation of events, and the aristos had fought each other for the honor of serving in a new founding.

The process had been incredibly expedited by the intervention of the rogue trader, Sigismund Lucius, who had paid a richly sum upfront for the regiments' services. There was no doubt in Trevin's mind that a great deal of bribes must have been included, for the Munitorum had sent specialist to train 25,000 guardsmen, twice as many support staffers, as well as secured enginseers and battle psykers from the Cult Mechanicus and Adeptus Astra Telepathica. The year had finally cumulated with the great ball, where the proud soldiers of the Imperium now danced their last before being plunged in the horrors of the galaxy.

At least the men and women who danced beside their commander would not be used in vain, like his dead comrades had been. Augustus Trevin, under the stringent tutelage of his own Munitorum instructors, had been trained to shoulder the mantle of division leadership. He held no doubt that combined with his own decade of front line experiences, he would serve his soldiers as readily as they would serve him, and the Emperor.

The waltz renewed its graceful measures and the couple closed into each other's embrace, far closer than what was proper.

"What are you smiling about, Augustus?" Della cooed with a smile of her own.

"Only that you are the most ravishing woman I have ever had the honor of dancing with." Trevin held her hand and waist softly. There was no need to battle for the lead. Their movements were in tandem.

"Hush now, you and your silver tongue. You'll make your brother jealous." She nodded to the crowd which surrounded the vast ballroom's heart. Olaf stood stoically besides Richard and Phillip, who in order of their birth, wore less and less ornamentation. The Trevin line bred true, with strong jaws, square shoulders, and a slow but distinguished graying at the coif. By looking at them, Augustus who was the youngest, could easily see what the next few decades had in store for him. That is, if he lived that long.

"Will you still love me when I look like him?" Gus took the opportunity and he walked around his lover to nod his head in Olaf's direction. Della stifled a laugh.

"You had the good sense to accept my advances, so yes. I will. But you should still remain on your best behavior." She spoke with all the authority her rank had once given her. Trevin winked.

"You should have accepted a commission Josephine. You were born to lead." The humor in Della's face slowly faded. They had debated this subject at lengths many times already. One which her lover, seemingly, never left to rest for very long.

"Don't spoil this evening dear. It's going to be a busy day tomorrow and you don't want to spend the night fighting over this." Her warning did not threaten, it promised.

Trevin's mischievous smile tipped his hand before the music stopped. The assorted nobility staggered as _Dudentum's Imperious March_ fell dead in its track. The Trevin family major-domo nearly had a heart attack, his eyes searched madly as his hand clutched his vestments, seeking desperately for the cause of the orchestra's sudden faux-pas.

In concentric rings, the officers of the Persephonian foundings took a knee, dragging their confused dance partners down with them until only Trevin and Della stood, the center of everyone's attention. Josephine quickly noticed that the nearest of the conspirators were none other than Melot, Lancer, Steld, and a reticent Siggurd. Misfit had insinuated themselves into position during the long fanciful dance and now, sabers unsheathed, presented their arms to Trevin and Della.

"As you will not be one of my commanders, it is clear to me now that only one course of action will avail me. Josephine Della, would you kindly take me as your husband."

Della reddened, but invariably smiled. All round, ladies swooned at the display, or grumpily looked to their own dance partners and wondered why they were dirtying the hem of their dresses for another man's marriage proposal. As an unusually sheepish Corvin appeared at Trevin's side to present the wedding band, Della extended her gloved hand, fingers parted to accept the proposal. The newly ordained Brigadier-Colonel, a rank specifically retrieved from the Munitorum's dusty archives to anoint the strange new formation's leadership, slipped the marvellously bejeweled band on his beloved's finger. As one, the officers roared in jubilation.

The room burst into festivities, champagnes being popped in wild abandon, and music poured forth from rich resonant instruments. The honor guard slipped their sabres back into their sheaths and crowded around the newly promised couple.

"I should probably get used to saluting Lady Della again, things being what they are… or will it be lady Trevin?" joked Melot, his pristine command squad uniform marking him as Trevin's own. All but Siggurd boasted the same markings, though it had not be because of any demerit on his part. While Misfit had become Trevin's command squad, Siggurd had been given a far more challenging task which would take him away from Trevin's side.

"I might concede to include his name with mine, but I haven't made up my mind yet," answered the blushing bride to be. She shook her head at each of her friends. "To think he put you all up to this ridiculous display."

The dance floor's informal lines were abandoned as a crowd surged near the honored couple. The press of their bodies was nearly as suffocating as the adoration which they voiced. The promised couple, assisted by Misfit, escaped the crowd and walked pass a still sweaty major-domo. As Trevin and Della entered a private reception hall, house guards closed ranks behind them, and encourage a certain decorum from the smitten crowd.

"Mad people, one and all," muttered Corvin as he peered through the thin curtains which decorated the glass panes of the hall's door. "Don't get me wrong," the wolfish trooper added as he glanced at Trevin and Della, "But all this ruckus over getting hitched…?"

"I second that," growled Siggurd, as he leaned his hip against a great nalwood dinner table. "But as long as you keep your dramatic flair off the battle field, we should be fine. Then again, look who I'm talking to." Siggurd, now sporting a regimental sergeant major's mark, stiffened immediately, and added a "Sir."

Trevin laughed. "Keep the formalities for when we're at war Siggurd. I know this probably grinds at your gears, but we have all been through enough together that whatever the ranks between us, I consider us all equal." The noble leaned into his beloved and kissed her softly, sending the Persephonian born men and woman around them into uncomfortable silence.

"Should we…. leave you two alone?" asked Steld. The girl with the dead eyes had changed over the years. Far less than the troopers lost on Kursk, whose subjective experience had been a decade to their companions' single year, but still in a significantly way. Steld was no longer so vapid, and even smiled or laughed at times. Unbeknownst to all but Siggurd, the command squad's new medic had freed herself of her morphium addiction after a long struggle. A strange bond existed now between the scarred killer and the silent healer, one which left others guessing. The truth would never be known, but between the two, a tortured past finally found it balm.

"No, Laura. Its fine," laughed Josephine. Trevin seemed to disagree, but smartly kept it to himself.

"I'm so glad you'll be coming along then. It just wouldn't be a proper scuffle without you, Della." Lancer smiled, his teeth a bit askew. The last in a long line of selective breeding, Freddy had a gift for pointing the obvious in a way that dispelled presumptions.

In truth, Trevin had proposed to Della as a final promise before departing, never assuming she would follow, but insuring she would be taken care off. Especially after selling her estate and sacrificing her inheritance to fund his rescue. It was clear to him that Josephine had not realized what her acceptance of his offer pertained. Until now.

She would either stay behind, perhaps to never see her husband again, and hopefully conceive an heir before his inevitable departure, or she would follow in his wake, and into war once more. It wasn't much of a choice. Della was once again reminded just how slippery, in spite of his many virtues, Augustus truly was. A Trevin through and through, and she had played straight into his hands.

He would make a good imperial commander, capable of slipping through the cut-throat politics of the top brass with relative ease. Tonight however, she would remind him that she, was not one of those people.

The masters of the _Semper Fidelis _had convened as ordered. Evangeline had almost sat in the wrong chair, remembering that she was now the captain of the warship until further notice. She made herself comfortable in her brother's seat, the high backed velour throne was carved from some alien wood, another testament to Sigismund's strange fascination with the xeno. The lumen globes, wrought in brass frames, were ensconced evenly about the ready room.

Every time Evangeline had attended her brother's congress, she had found the garish decorations and the mismatched styles of furniture a little too much to bear, but as she sat in his seat and saw the room as he did, she couldn't help but smile. From her new vantage, the stuffed fauna, the tapestries, and the design of the seats, all made perfect sense. The brooding stone arch behind Keever whispered of the ravens he was so fond of; where Sola would have sat, commerce house portraits painted in slick oily pigments showed a wealth of gelts, but more to the point, great acts of charity; Enginseer Prime Scartus, who rarely ventured to these meetings, was surrounded by tasteful machinery and bold, powerfully raw reminders of Mars' majesty.

Each and every officer, even her usually overlooked position as second in command, was depicted through the eyes of her brother's juvenile mirth. Irony, sarcasm, and affection were spread in equal measure; from Hubert's ancient medals and an old, ratty bicorn hat not worn in ages, to the classical marble bust of a mother figure cradling a new born baby girl in her arms. The same girl which, by appearance, was hidden here and there, if one knew where to look, behind Evangeline's customary seat.

She and Sigs had never been close, not in the way siblings often were. But then, most siblings weren't dynastic heirs to a millennia old charter of trade, signed by the high lords of Terra. But sitting in her brother's place, she saw herself as only he could, his tender heart unable to speak words he had never been taught. Is this the way you see the world, Sigs? Hidden in the folds of others?

"As you all know," began the commander, pushing aside thoughts of her dying sibling, "our captain is in dire shape." Both Sola and Magda, who would normally have been in attendance, were busy with Sigismund's condition. Hubert, the ship's steward, had volunteer to bring them the news of this congress' decision. The onetime captain of the _Semper Fidelis_, long retired, sat in pained silence as he put his duty before his personal wishes. The old man had been a stable of Sigismund's life since early on, and vice versa. It caused Hubert great distress to be away from the captain's side at such a critical time.

"I now open the floor to suggestions as to how to proceed, considering our separation from the flotilla and the mandate passed on to us by the Lord Dynast himself regarding Ultra Primaris."

"Firstly, I believe we can all agreed, that news of the captain's fate must be contained." Johnston, Master of Etherics, whose seat positioned him near a model voidship, mighty auspex arrays deployed, was the first to address the matter of moral. "The crew knows he is wounded, but not that he stands at death's door. Propaganda must be deployed."

The Mistress of the Vox, Eloquell, whose office belonged under Johnston's command, but whose rank also allowed for her expertise to be represented in congress, nodded. "I agree, news of the captain's death would severely hamper our effectiveness. If knowledge spread of his lordship falling at the hands of the very xenos who remain set against us, it would rob the crew of their will fight unless we can turn their minds to vengeance-."

"To a degree," interrupted Remi, who stood in for Pater. A tapestry of an ancient Terran myth adorned the alcove to his right, in which a woman with a nest of snakes for hair turned valiant warriors to stone with her gaze. "If you whip these men into a fanatic craze, I can assure you the jump to warpspace, when needed, will be very turbulent. The empyrean is a mirror of men's psyche. In such close quarters and far from any other psychic wake to mitigate it, a crew bent on death and destruction would only cause our own." The Nostromo's words were reasonable, yet his message was somewhat displaced by the haughty arrogance with which he delivered it.

"I will gird the souls of his Majesty's subject with prayer and rites. Vengeance against the xeno is ever the duty of the Imperial son, whose life is spent in service of mankind's manifest destiny." Confessor Alabaster, a Drusian at heart, was surrounded by scrolls stamped with the waxen seal of imperial saints. The priest's left hand was wrapped in a steel rosary, its segments biting into his skin as a tiny act of perpetual contrition. "Know that the crew will be set in righteous purpose against the alien." The cleric's unshakable confidence was met with the navigator's scoff.

"Whatever will be, shall be, but until then I wish to report that our magazines are full. The turbo macrocannons primed, and the gun crew fit. Should we encounter any opposition, I promise you the _Semper Fidelis'_ bite will be worse than her bark!" Bargast, The Master of Ordinance, slammed his open palm on the congress table energetically, breaking the tension between Remi and Alabaster, and moving the agenda forward.

"I suppose the same goes for our warriors, Master of Arms?" prompted Evangeline.

"Aye, daughter of the hills." Keever was not fond of Evangeline's lineage, her mother being of a competing clan than the raven's own, on the far away world where the dynasty fetched its wives. Nonetheless, his knightly honor would not allow him to dissent. Keever had settled for being politely curt instead.

"And I have sent my choir's voice upon the waves my lady." Potholomus rubbed his hands together softly, his concordiast by his side, anointing them with therapeutic fragrance. It was rare that the witch left his warded tower, and ventured into the noisy halls of the ship. The thousands of minds which inhabited the warship were angry jagged things, and did not agree with the blind pacifist. Today had been an exception. The white bearded telepath, empty sockets hidden from others by a linen blindfold, unerringly observed the room's inhabitants. Without effort or fail, each officer's true heart was laid bare to him. None more so than the frightened, nervous thing which beat in the commander's chest. She did well to hide it from the others.

"News of our situation will no doubt reach the flotilla, and given a few weeks, we should receive news in turn. Warp permitting, of course. There is an eerie stillness here, a calm like a crystal web, invisible threads spread thin along its breadth."

The navigator rolled his eyes; never trust a witch, he often said. As for the old astropath's soothsaying, the rest of the officers nodded politely and shared expressions of deep thought bordering from the ponderous to simply the confused.

"To business then… I suppose." Evangeline straightened her lapels, taking a deep breath. "We were given orders to prepare Ultra Primaris for colonization. As things stands, it is clear that we are not equipped for the task, which was never intended to extend our mandate into one of total war against an Eldar craftworld." The commander, shivering beneath the folds of her immaculately pressed uniform, took a data slate in her hands and whispered the prayers of ignition, its flickering green text appearing after the correct rune had been pressed.

"It seemed that my brother – Emperor, watch over him - set the wheels of divine intervention into motion. For whatever purpose, he commissioned the founding of a sizable imperial guard force. What's more," frowned Evangeline, trying to fathom her brother's machinations, "the army has been outfitted with logistical report, and is presently in transit aboard _The Bull_, a universe class mass conveyor, to this very star system."

Murmurs spread across the room as the masters of the _Semper Fidelis_ pondered the implication of their captain's shadowy dealings. More than one rogue trader heir had won his throne with the misuse of the resources at his disposal. The possibility of a coup, was not beyond considering.

"When are they scheduled to arrive?" asked Keever.

Evangeline let her fingers skirt the green text, looking for the answer she knew the data slate held. "According to this… a few months, but well before the flotilla's scheduled return."

The assembly turned to their Nostromo representative for confirmation, Remi simply shrugged.

"The Sea of Souls is so calm in these parts, even the incompetents of House Modar could pull it off," Remi said dismissively, clearly uncomfortable with the thought of praising a competitor.

The warlock was meditating within the confines of his ship's crystal matrix chamber. At their core, the sleek Eldar ships were wraithbone constructs sculpted into shape by the bonesingers. These seers summoned the substance from the weave itself, their vibrant song giving the wraithbone life and purpose. In that sense, _Illuriel's voyage_ was a fine ship, but it would have been nothing without the circuit whose heart Tenzin now rested in.

Like the craftworld's infinity circuits, the crystal matrix housed the departed souls of the Eldar. Within the hull of Biel-Tan, the departed traveled however they so choose, some communing and serving its inhabitants, others joining the ships which docked with the craftworld. Like the living, these souls manned all manners of devices and posts, sharing the burden of tasks with their brethren. When the warlock had been given the task of avenging the fallen at the seer's council's discretion, _Illuriel's voyage_ had come to life unbidden. The ship had chosen to accompany Tenzin on his mission, and the souls which filled its hull had chosen to stand with it. Now, the dead readied the living, sharing Tenzin's burden as only they could.

It would be foolish to believe the dead had nothing to lose, however. Few of the spirits retained enough will to manifest a personality, especially after centuries within the circuit of living energy. But they were thinking, feeling beings, who knew the dangers of riding along a ship whose matrix might be destroyed. They knew the fate that awaited the unbound in the weave's darkest depths.

And so the Warlock meditated, focusing his inner will to empower the runes he cast. It came easily to him, in this place of the beyond. Nevertheless, the runes only predicted doom and suffering. Tenzin scooped the wraithbone runes and returned them to their resting place within the pouch at his hip. He focused anew, sending his mind along the weave's tangled web to divine the way in which he may destroy the mutant aberration which stood in the craftworld's way. The seers had seen how the mutant would wreak havoc, and deemed his death necessary.

The warlock flung the runes into the air blindly, their soft curves caressed by invisible strands of force, before they levitated in mid-air. The runes danced, fighting for dominance in a future yet to pass. Khaine blasted Morai-Heg from her orbit, cresting below the unyielding Asurmen. The runes had changed again, but this time in Tenzin's favor. Though war unbalanced his fate, the phoenix king remained ascendant. There was hope for victory yet, if Tenzin accepted his inevitable sacrifice. This was not truly a new development. The council had known the instrument would not survive. Yet the instrument had accepted, knowing full well his sacrifice would save hundreds of his kind.

The only matter which concerned Tenzin, as he scooped the levitating runes, was how to ensure his sacrifice would result in the death of the mutant.

The chief surgeon slipped the glistening gloves from her fingers, tugging at the rubberized digits with frustration and fatigue. After nearly eight hours of bloody work, she had managed to save the Lord Captain's life. Or at the very least, extend it. Magda knew what came next. She scrubbed her hands with surgical soap until the skin was raw. As unpleasant as the rites of ablution were, it was the post operation hubbub she despised the most.

Magda kicked the surgical theater's staff-only door with her augmented foot. The rest of her auxiliaries and her aid, Doctor Holt, would finish sewing up the unconscious captain while she handled the "business" as she liked to call it. Being wrist deep in a body cavity was something Magda could handle, her years in the Scintillan Fusiliers had inured her to the plight of dying. It was those who lived which proved the problem, them and their damn kin. The dead after all, were done pleading.

The veteran field medic rounded the bend into the patients' ward, though that was too generous a term for what was left of her med bay after Sigismund had signed a chunk of it away to the six eyed wonders. Magda lit her habitual lho stick. Standing there, in the half darkness, amidst twinkling indicators and their rhythmic chiming, was the vice factotum. The girl's red eyes and strained, tired features probably looked a lot like Magda's own, but for different reasons. It was time to get to "business".

"Here for the captain?" The chief medical officer asked with a jerk of her head towards the intensely lit surgical theater.

Sola wrapped her arms around herself, the long day's stress leaving her empty and chilled to her core. She nodded, unable to offer much else. Magda didn't look very enthused as she looked over her charts and took a long breath, making the tip of her lho stick burn with life, before starting what she hope would be a short conversation.

"The captain suffered from a perforated abdomen with multiple lesions along his intestinal track. He was borderline septic, sor if you were wondering why he might have vomited profusely befo-"

"He didn't," interrupted Sola. Her memory coils were running the past 24 hours in her mind and she was sure Sigismund hadn't been sick. Everything was recorded, just as she recorded this conversation to later store within her desk cogitator.

"Well, he should have been, so I guess he held it in. Not bad for a man in his 50s. There are people who can push through systemic shock like that, but they are rare. Anyway, that wasn't the worst of it, as you might have imagined by the centimeter wide burn mark in his thoracic cavity."

Sola nodded again, but remained silent, Sigismund must have had extensive rejuvenate treatments, he barely looked into his 30s. The room was eerily silent, even though a dozen people were in their beds, hooked up to various apparatus, wheezing or beeping in their steady rhythmic patterns. It felts like talking over someone's grave, it felt… wrong.

"High intensity las fire burnt 30% of his left lungs, fused two ribs, and cause massive aortic swelling in addition to cardiac failure. I was told you performed the rites of vitae extension?"

Again, Sola nodded, unsure as to what else to offer. This wasn't her area of expertise. Some would have described her as an obsessive perfectionist, but the truth was, she despised not being able to control the variables which suffused her life. The battle and everything which had transpired after was a clear example of this. It had simply happened, outside of her ability to control and even that fact seem to drift into a partial haze, like a dream half formed at the cusp of awakening.

"Well, you forced enough blood to feed his brain, though we will have to see if he suffered any cerebral damage once he regains consciousness. In the occurrence of said damage, the dynasty has stocked the _Semper Fidelis_ with some of the best augments known to the Mechanicus, and I have a magos biologis on staff capable of the precision necessary to replace significant parts of the captain's brain. A wise choice of stock if you ask me, considering the dynasty's line of work."

"I know," mumbled Sola, finally something she could compute. Sola had been informed of the augmentations being delivered to the med bay a few months after her promotion to vice factotum. The 36 different implants produced by the Lathe worlds could, in theory, replace every vital organs an officer might lose, in addition to his limbs, his five sense, and should the need arise, even modify certain aspects of the human body simply for optimisation's sake.

The chief surgeon pinched her lho stick from between her lips and discarded the accumulated ash in her smock's pocket. "I suppose you would. Anyway, we've replaced the lung, and sectioned the dead artery to reconnect it with the heart, which is also being supported by an infuser. It's a sort of plastek wrapping which assists in regulating the flow and pressure of blood at critical junctions of the heart, in this case a swollen valve, and part of the upper left chamber. Magos biologis Viridian assures me it will help greatly."

It would. This too Sola was familiar with, though she did not understand the miracle in its entirety. A hermeneutic concoction blessed by the mysteries of the Omnissiah was used to replace a subjects own blood, or in this case assist through a transfusion. The blood itself, given sentience by the millions of machine spirits woven within its structure, proceeded to flow through a blessed adept's body and repair it of even the most grievous of wounds. This sort of miracle was usually never used on lay persons, but then, she didn't expect the priesthood to continue infusing his blood, and so the miracle would eventually run its course and disinvest him of its power.

"When all is said and done, we will have to see if he awakens from the slumber we have forced him in. Then and only then, will we be able to ascertain if his mind survived as well as his body." Magda let go of the sheaf of paper attached to her clipboard, having resumed all of her charts and prognosis. "The Emperor must have plans for him, he should have been dead three times over."

"The Emperor favors the bold," whispered the vice factotum. The chief surgeon had caught the tail of it.

"Haven't heard that iteration before. Trust me, I have seen thousands upon thousands of guardsmen be bold. He didn't protect them…" Magda muttered a curse, catching herself too late. She would have to seek penance with confessor Alabaster for this one.

"Sigismund was…" Sola shook her head, "I mean he is, fond of that saying."

"Anyway," Magda cradled the charts to her chest, uttering her favorite fall back word. "You should get yourself some rest before you do yourself harm. He'll be much happier to see his girlfriend's face if it's not so haggard with worry."

"Oh… wait, no." Sola waved her hand dismissively. "I'm not his girlfriend."

The old vet sighed, snuffing her lho stick with deliberate slowness against the clipboard in her hand. "Why the hell, are you in my ward then?"

The command crew had been on high alert for hours now, ever since breaking from the planet's high orbit. Ensign Dorothy knew the higher ups had a name for it, but he wasn't on the list of people who needed to be informed. Not that a lowly augury officer had any business, or any need really, to know the designation of the sapphire gem which hung silently in the view port. According to his instruments, the _Semper Fidelis_ was approximately a hundred thousand kilometers away, yet the planet still lingered into view.

A gibberish note from the servitor encased at Dorothy's auspex station called him from his musing. The ensign quickly looked around to see if Lieutenant Johnston had noticed, lifting his head from the array returns. No, the Master of Etherics was presently reviewing a long ticket spat by Ensign Cameron's station, the look on his bespectacled face one of frowning disapproval. Oh lucky day, though Dorothy, who busied himself with the quarterly summation rolling out of his own servitor's chest.

The poor wretch who now served as his limbless assistant was little more than an extra brain computing anomalous returns filtered from Dorothy's cogitator screen. The Imperium used condoned criminals as basic materials for their construction, which the Mechanicus assembled from various donors and endowed with a machine spirit loyal to its masters. Dorothy had heard of legends back before the age of strife, when machines had been made whole from mechanical parts. Devoid of souls, the Iron Men had turned against mankind and almost obliterated it. So these days, servitors with brains and souls facilitated cogitation beyond standard template capacity, following the age of adage that two heads were better than one.

Pip - that's what Dorothy called his lobotomized attendant - dutifully produced his report. The ensign rubbed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes to release some of the pressure. Hours of staring at the dimly lit screen always took its toll. Pulling at the ticket, Dorothy inspected the anomaly report, noting that several auspex ghosts had appeared during the last quarter of the watch. The returns were garbled, and far too apart to be a ship, but it almost looked like one. If this were right, and it surely couldn't, then the _Semper Fidelis_ would have picked up a tail at the edge of his auspex range.

Dorothy thought about calling Lieutenant Johnston's attention to the report, but Ensign Cameron's expression, along with the tirade he was now enduring, convinced him to wait until he had something a bit more concrete than his suspicion. After all, these returns were unusual, yes, but far from a threat. The high alert had made Dorothy jumpy, that's all, just as Cameron had been, no doubt, and that hadn't ended well for him either.

Hubert slipped into the patient ward and straight into Sigismund's intensive care chamber. It was late, but his priority codes allowed him entrance to all parts of the ship. Even the armsmen guarding the ward had allowed him his visit, knowing full well of Hubert's service to the dynasty, and his rank before retirement. These men had been raised on their fathers' stories, fighting side by side with Lord Captain Horatio Hubert, the slayer of the false Emperor of Kalka; conqueror of Sigma Delta; despoiler of the tribal queen of Galaga, whose purity was said to return with each rising morning, until Horatio had quelled her heart.

The old man, now shrouded in simple steward's robes, was a shadow of the warrior he had once been. He and Anthonid had once been poised to conquer the Koronus expanse, but that had been a long time ago. Before Sigismund's mother, the Lion of Ultramar's first wife. Hubert had been fond of Sieglinde's stubborn individualism. So had Anthonid, at first. Sigismund shared much with his mother, as carefree and bewitching as the ravens of her clan. Though the infant had never truly met the woman which bore him, it was her death which gave him life. He only hoped Sigismund would not share his mother's fate. It was a cruel death, to die for someone else's end, discarded as a means to ensure success.

For what else could have been Anthonid's aim, when he ordered the midwives of the dynasty to save his heir, even though it would kill his wife. The old steward didn't blame Anthonid however, for he knew the warrior queen would have carved her own belly to give her son life, were she conscious to do so. Her memory accompanied Hubert as he walked closer to the drapes which hid the scion's bed, slowly, he parted the veil.

When Hubert saw him, it stung his eyes and broke his heart. Sigismund was pale and swathe in bandages. Brass ringed tubes were attached to seals on his chest, and a mask fed him oxygen in shallow pulls. Tinctures and tonics were administered by machines, nursing life in a body which simply couldn't hold it on its own. Hubert cupped his parchment dry lips as he felt the first of many tremors reach his lips. The ancient sat himself by the captain's bed, reaching out to hold a hand which hung limply on the sheets.

"I pray you forgive me Siggy, for this life you've had to live." Hubert stifled his lament, squeezing the younger man's hand. Despite the captain's decades commanding the _Semper Fidelis_, Hubert would always see Sigismund as the young boy who, scared and desperate to please his father, had become the man he is today. A man who desperately tried to outrun a part of himself which, stubbornly, refused to be left behind. It was a shame that this headlong chase of his so often lead him into danger.

"I know you feel Anthonid abandoned you, raised a scion and not a son. But I have tried, my boy, to love you as a father should. You needn't look far for the acceptance you crave. Siggy… listen to me." Hubert lifted his tired bones, sobs threatening to wrack his body with every breath. He stroked a wrinkled hand across the comatose man's brow.

"You are surrounded by people who believe in who you are, not who Anthonid wants you to be. Who serve in your honor, sacrifice at your call, and trust in your judgement." It was a herculean task for the old man to calm his heart, and blink away the stinging tears without breaking into an unseemly mess. Before him laid a man he would be proud to call "son" were he able to. A man's whose careless disregard for his own safety was written in his blood as well as his soul, but who needn't heed its thunderous call. Hubert could almost hear Sieglinde's war cry resonate through her son, "Glory or Death!" her fierce spirit would no doubt be proud.

Words held tightly against his chest spilled unbidden from the ancient's lips. A lifetime of shame and guilt; for a father's sin, for a woman's love, for honor lost. But first and foremost, for a child cast away.

"I loved your mother terribly, Siggy, just as I love you, my son…"

Hubert begged, in that moment. He begged the Emperor, desperately, to forestall Sigismund's journey to the golden throne. He begged the Master of Mankind, to take his life instead, as surely as Sieglinde had given hers.

And when Sigismund's eyes slowly opened, his only regret was having but one life to give.

The shadow hunter _Illuriel's voyage_, the swiftest of the Eldar escort ships, swam through the void like a shark. It had caught its prey's scent. For hours now, the slick holo-fielded ship had managed to remain undetected by the mon-keigh's sensors. Always at its stern, _Illuriel's voyage _crept ever closer in expectation of its duty.

Within its slender halls, Tenzin had prepared his wargear, attuning himself with the implements of death which he would use to administer justice. He cradled his aspect helm in his hands, remembering Mauryon's call. Another maiden world despoiled, another _Bahzahkhaine_ needed. Tenzin who had sat in Isha's gardens, pondering the nature of his melodies with a slender flute in hand, had known he would be needed. He ventured to one of the many aspect shrine of Biel-tan, one in which he had served centuries before. The exarch, mighty L'Auria'Sall, had welcomed him. Once he had walk the path of the dire avenger, then of the seer. In an effort to calm the raging of his heart, he then had walked the path of the artist but it did not sate him. Now duty called, and with a shiver of anticipation chose to walk the path of the warlock, combining both martial and psychic training to become a lethal instrument of retribution.

Every few minutes, he would pause to center himself, and let the runes speak their prophesy. With each reading, the balance of runes shifted ever so slightly, but the moment to strike was fast approaching.

Climbing within a Vampire Raider, a curved bat-like assault craft, Tenzin settled by the gem studded controls. The ship would enable him to close within boarding range and infiltrate the brutish monstrosity the mon-keigh called a ship. As silent as the strike would be, once the hull of the enemy ship was breached, Tenzin's odds of survival diminished drastically.

Having honed his martial might as well as his innate psychic abilities, Tenzin was confident that he would succeed in infiltrating the ship, dispatching any opposition, and finally killing the abomination. Unfortunately, his craft would be left vulnerable to destruction by the ship's defenders. Once that happened, it was only a matter of time before Tenzin was cornered and eliminated. Perhaps, with chance, he could escape to the cold grasp of the void and wait for the Shadowhunter to save him, but the chances of the _Illuriel's voyage_ finding him, even while emitting a psychic beacon, were considerably lowered by the limited oxygen supply his rune armor contained.

Tenzin calmed the nagging doubt of mortality which clawing at the fortress of his mind. Assuming a meditative position, legs crossed over each other, he waited for the runes to show him the most opportune moment to strike. One in which his prey would be the least defended, preoccupied, and unwilling to call for help. In his mind's eye, the Eldar seer began to see a strange and grotesque laboratory. The vision of the menagerie was utterly vile. How could a species do such horrible things to its own? Tenzin's lips curled into a hateful sneer as his mind expanded into the vision, traveling dark and angular corridors towards his destiny.

Chief bosun Ribella was not a happy woman. She wasn't happy because the commander wasn't happy. And the commander wasn't happy because an Eldar ship had appeared out of nowhere, fired a salvo of starcannons, and then disappeared into the inky void without a trace. The sudden attack had left three decks on fire, a cackling Infernus Master happily wrangling the flames, and two scores of her armsmen sealing emergency bulkheads while another was dealing with the casualties.

"Report!" bellowed the chief when she came into sight of her carapace-clad lackeys.

The bosun snapped at attention and saluted. "All clear here m'am! The ratings pulled out of the blaze are in triage as we speak and Master Mika is free to do as his infernus crew wills."

Ribella leaned in close, the bosun shirking at her scrutiny, before tossing him aside and hurrying to the sealed bulkhead. The hatch wheel was turning slowly, as if an oxygen starved rating was desperately trying to escape. The enforcer twisted the wheel with all her strength, forcing the hatch open for the forgotten survivor. Only, it wasn't a survivor on the other side.

An Eldar was standing haughtily, his emerald-green form fitting carapace was covered in glowing runes and swirling robes. His featureless helmet, save for two lenses burning with eldritch light, tipped as if to offer thanks. Then, he lifted his free hand, the other holding a long masterfully wrought blade in a loose grip, and let surge a powerful blast of raw warp energy.

Ribella was struck full in the chest and fell back into a sprawl. Her armsmen, who had been confused at their chief's actions to begin with, were now positively bewildered as the lithe warlock stepped out of the bulkhead. Rage and anger boiled from the witch's mind and took shape as death incarnate. The runes of destruction glowered with renewed power as they shielded the Eldar psyker from the brunt of the weave's touch. Instead, all his power was channeled through the rune into a pattern devoid of the warps' perils.

The armsmen were struck by the fury of the storm, bodies shredding as burst after burst of eldritch power erupted from the warlock's hand. With inhuman speed, the robed warrior sprinted down the corridor, sidestepping those wounded by the Shadowhunter's earlier attack. The ship's distraction had allowed Tenzin's assault craft to melt through the monstrosity's hull undetected, disguised by the more obvious damage of the attack run. Now that the decks were sealed to prevent the fire to spread, his chances of survival had increased substantially. Strange how he still took notice of this, despite having committed himself to this suicide mission.

Ribella, who had taken the brunt of the immature psychic storm, pulled herself up from the grilled decking. The armsmen behind her had not been so lucky, instead of suffering a powerful kinetic push, they had been at the epicenter of the explosive energy. Most were in bloody tatters if not outright dead. "Ribella to command," gasped the chief into her wrist mounted vox unit, "there's a damn Eldar onboard and he just wiped an entire squad of armsmen. I repeat, we are boarded by Eldar forces!"

"Understood," grumbled Keever. Seconds after, a full blown boarding alert was ringing through the decks, summoning every available armsmen to choke points in defensive patterns.

"I'm going after the perpetrator," said Ribella as she unhooked her power maul and unholstered her hand canon.

"Good hunting, chief."

As he had expected, the mon-keigh were too feeble to halt his progress into the bowels of the ship. Tenzin moved at a blistering pace, slipping out of the net which was drawing around him. When the mon-keigh presented an obstacle, either in the way of locked portals or massed resistance, he simply altered his course.

The skeins of fate split before his eyes, allowing him to evade ambushes and find the least defended corridors. Against latter, he unleashed the runes of destruction, or made himself impossible to target with the runes of concealment. He now dashed through one such checkpoint, the cumbersome humans in their carapace armors filling the corridor with shotgun shells. The Eldar's unnatural reflexes combined with his foresight allowed him to weave and dance around the swarms of led pellets. When he was within arm's length of his enemies, Tenzin combines his dodges with attacks, letting the keening edge of the witchblade slice through the mon-keigh's useless armors.

Armsmen fell in ribbons, or burst aflame in psychic energy as the warlock channeled his might through the blade. After he had finished his dance of death, he used the force weapon to cleave the bulkhead which stood before him. Segments of the thick metal hatch fell to the ground as more armsmen arrived to support their now dead comrades. They lifted their shotguns and let the stocky weapons bark in mad abandon, but the warlock had already thrown himself into the sliced open portal.

With a grace unimaginable for even the most athletic of lesser races, Tenzin twisted mid-leap and landed with all the momentum necessary for him to continue sprinting, a flurry of robes trailing in his wake. The warlock darted along a now mostly undefended corridor, keeping his enemies off-balance by blowing through their defenses faster than they could react, and pushing deeper into now undefended regions of the ship. Nothing could stop what was coming, least of all Tenzin himself, now deep within the grasp of his aspect.

On the bridge of the _Semper Fidelis_, the commander waited impatiently on the Master of Arms to explain what the hell was happening on her ship. Keever, nonplussed at the daughter of the hills' insistence, watched his reports pile up on his lectern. They were coming faster than he could read, and in consequence, had no time for the pinning of the would-be-captain.

"Unbelievably, there seems to be only one intruder, but he is swift and lethal. He has ignored all possible sabotage targets in favor of a wild charge and is heading to the lower command decks. He'll soon hit the- "Keever slammed his armored fist on his lectern, opening the channel which would reach all the defenders of the ship. "All forces retreat to the command deck and hold the line at the medical bay." The knight quickly stabbed another runes. "Ribella, the Eldar has come to finish what they started. The enemy is heading straight to the captain's location!"

"Aye-aye sir!" Ribella seemed a bit breathless, no doubt pursuing as fast as she could with nearly 50 kilos of gear and armor, but her locator put her only 200 meters behind the intruder, which was impressive.

The chief was like a freight train, slow to start but unstoppable once she built momentum. Byways and corridors flashed at the periphery of her sight as she pounded her boots against the deck. Ahead, armsmen laid in various states of dismemberment, the few survivor getting out of her way or covering her advance. In waves, the armsmen moved back and folded onto themselves, planning on making a stand at the base of the command deck intra-structure, but they would be too late.

Ribella vaulted over a bulkhead partition, slamming into an armsmen and sending him sprawling onto the floor, the rest of his unit got out of the way with surprised yelps. Soon, a veritable throng of shotgun totting dynast guards were following in her wake, trusting in the chief's urgency.

The medical bay hatch was already cleaved in half, its edges still red with heat. Good, Ribella thought, she was closing in.

The chief bosun burst into the patient ward, molten metal hissing against her ceramite pauldrons. The Eldar warlock twisted in place, seemingly amused at the enforcer's blundering charge. By the time Ribella had thrown herself into a spearing lunge, the Eldar was already atop a groaning patient's bed. The injured man, a heavily dosed Barr, clawed at the warlock's grieve, too drugged to offer much of a resistance. Ribella's lunge had knocked a gurney to the floor, spilling its content onto the deck in a shamble of plastic tubing and ready-to-transfuse blood. With a whipping motion, the maul in her gauntleted hand extended to its full length and powered to its kill setting.

The chief aimed her hand canon at the warlock at the same time the Eldar let loose another storm of psychic might, pulverising her surroundings. Ribella's own shots went wide as the alien leaped away, and in his stead, a life preserving contraption was blown to pieces by the hand canon's heavy caliber slugs.

The warlock leapt from gurney to gurney as if cloud walking, an angry bull in tow. Ribella shoulder barged obstacles, crushed them with her maul, or kicked gurneys out of the way in her pursuit of the xeno, no matter the state of their occupants. Behind the thick observation window, which looked into the surgical theater, the medical staff were taking cover in the sealed room. All but Magda, who screamed wordlessly, pounding her fists against the sturdy soundproof glass as her ward was being demolished by the chief bosun. More armsmen were now filing into the ward, taking cover behind gurneys and medical equipment, pumping their combat shotgun into readiness. At their sight, the chief surgeon simply threw her arms up in frustrated abandon.

The battle here was not to Tenzin's liking. Though he doubted the mon-keigh would be so brash as to fire in a room full of their wounded, he didn't put it pass them. Additionally, the madwoman nipping at his heals was sure to get lucky sooner or later. No, Tenzin had to keep on track, keep moving, and eliminate his target. He spied an air vent protruding from the ceiling and let the red headed barbarian chase after him, each leap striking at the vent's casing as he dodged her brutish assaults. On the third strike the vent fell over her head, and Tenzin levitated himself into its passages, his nimble frame easily slipping into its recesses.

The chief bosun howled in frustration as the Eldar escaped, she swatted the falling ventilation away with her power maul and proceeded to fire blindly at the ceiling in hopes of hitting her mark. When it was clear no blood would come rushing out of the cavity, she took stock of her surroundings. She ordered the armsmen to secure the ward and stand guard over the captain, whose chamber had been spared the chief's attention. She activated her armor's vox system and spoke into her vambrace.

"The captain is secured but the Eldar fled through the vents." Ribella the Red breathed heavily through her mouth, her blood pounding in her head and coloring her skin the likes of her moniker. "I'll scour the section and make sure he doesn't get away."

"Understood," came Keever's voice, audibly relieved at his lord's safety. "Keep me informed."

Ribella spared the surgical theater a glance and caught Magda's dirty stare. With an improvised gesture, the chief asked about the captain's wealth fare, now in the general direction of Ribella's stabbing finger. The chief medical officer adjusted her smock irritably and made her way out of the sealed room. Her awkward limp diminishing in no way the anger she projected at Ribella's handiwork.

"He's fine, more or less. He's been in and out of consciousness since yesterday, but responsive." Relented Magda, eventually.

The chief bosun nodded, then looked up at the ventilation duct that had been gutted by the Eldar. "Does that lead anywhere important?"

Magda shook her head, squatting to pick up equipment which had been thrown about during the fight. "What, that? No… not that I know of." The veteran medic groaned as she straightened up, her augmentic leg's servos whining. "Unless you count the Nostromo's section next door. Use to be my-"

"Oh Frak me!" interrupted the chief. Ribella screwed her helmet on and opened a vox channel to the Master of Arms. If the Eldar had wanted the captain dead, then it had ignored a dozen opportunities to do so during their tussle. No, more likely, the med bay had simply been on the way to its true objective. Ribella swore up a storm, ships didn't sail well without navigators.

"It's quieted again," whispered Meyer. The frightened navigator had abandoned his work when the carnage had begun next door. The alarm klaxons had been bad enough, but with the screams ringing through the metal hall, he simply hadn't been able to concentrate.

Remi rolled his eyes and continue to peruse the last of this batch's data. The experimental serum they had concocted actually seem to hold up against forced mutation. The genes which seem to hold more latent potential for degeneration in the Nostromo, remained sturdy and within healthy parameters. Of course, these humans lack a few unique chromosomes to test, but at least a partial map could be constructed and tested. So far the results were promising.

"Yes yes, stop bleating Meyer, and get back to work."

When the metallic crash reached Remi's ears, he had summoned a mouthful of expletives to grace Meyer with. But when he turned to berate the junior, Meyer had already scampered into cover. Before Remi now stood a towering Eldar, psychic blade drawn, and venom on his lips.

"Die abomination!"

A shivering sense of impending doom filled Remi as the world slowed to a crawl. A curious sensation washed over his brow. His third eye was opened and bleeding warp energy like never before. But instead of a tide of malicious fire, a temporal distortion enveloped the navigator. The Eldar's witchblade arched towards his neck, the force weapon emitting a strange pull, but Remi had ample time to step aside. Although not a psyker per say, a navigator was intuitively aware of the warp all around him. It was part of the reason they could navigate the empyrean so well. Whatever witchery was at work within the xeno weapon, Remi was fairly certain that even a nick from the blade could spell a horrendous end for him. Perhaps it was this realization that had spurred this strange, spontaneous manifestation of his.

As the blade sliced through the cogitator Remi had been using a second ago, the warlock turned into his strike and faced the smirking navigator anew. "How did you do that?" spat the cautious warlock, the taint of the mon-keigh's language heavy on his tongue.

"When I figure it out," smiled Remi cruelly, "I'll let you know."

The warlock lifted his hand, fingers splayed and charged with power, but Remi's sharp reflexes were as quick as the warlock. Ethereal madness boiled from the navigator's eye and bled reality thin, warping time to Remi's pleasure. Before the rune of destruction could smite the Nostromo, he glided easily to safety. The psychic storm of spite ripped at the walls of the chamber, buckling the heavy metal, but failing to kill any of the abominations.

A dull pain stabbed into Remi's brain. Perhaps indulging in this new ability carelessly was ill advised. First, he had to kill the Eldar, then he would explore this strange manifestation of the navigator's eye. From behind his desk, Meyer dared a peek, but that's all he needed. The feeble navigator's true eye glimmered softly, a pale shadow of Remi's own robust well of colors.

The Eldar snatched his extended arm away from Meyer's gaze, thin translucent flames licking along the edge of the psycho-reactive armor. With a howl of pain the Eldar leapt towards Meyer, witchblade leading the way. Psychic power bled from the Eldar, his robes spiralled open like a blooming flower, before piercing his target's shoulder with his keen force weapon.

It was Meyer's time to scream as his body caught ablaze with psychic energy. The navigator collapsed and writhed on the floor, his very soul bleeding from the blade's wound as it was consumed by the hungry eldritch flames.

Had Remi ever held concern for anyone but himself, he might have hesitated. With a scream of quintessential exertion, Remi focused the lense of his eye, channeling the torrents of the warp into the small confines of his laboratory. The wave engulfed the warlock and his prone victim, washing over their bodies in two very different way. The Eldar wrestled with his psychic power to erect a shield against the mortal blaze clawing at his soul while Meyer gasped in stunned silence, mind blasted into unconsciousness.

Although navigators were immune to the lethal gaze, their eye still caused great pain, often robbing the one or the other of his vitality. Meyer had clearly succumbed to Remi's more powerful gaze. But the Eldar had not, surprisingly, died in the warp tide. His soul still clung to his blackening body with remarkable stubbornness.

Having unleashed all of his power, in addition to meddling with something he had never before attempted, Remi collapsed. His final gambit to destroy his would be assassin had failed. While he and Meyer succumbed to unconsciousness, the flame licked warlock staggered to a stand. His witchblade remained untouched by the warps torrents, unlike the half of dozen test subjects which had been powerless to bathe in the eye's gaze. Those were now burnt husks tied to tarnished tables, their mutations as unrecognizable as their bodies.

Tenzin focused his not inconsiderable will to take a step, and then another, until he finally stood over the abomination. When his psychic shield had faltered, his rune armor had flared to life. The runes of invulnerability and safeguard were now little more than melted slag, much like most of his body under the armor. Tenzin would not survive, but like the runes had shown him, he now stood above fate and duty, assured in victor.

The Eldar's keen senses were shattered and melted, his mind afire with the singular act of lifting his witchblade to deal the final blow. Otherwise, he would have heard the scrapping sound of metal being displaced. Before the warlock could be vindicated, his wraith bone helmet exploded into shards, with most of his head in tow.

Behind him, slowly stepping into the room from a hidden underdeck passage, was Devros the Twistcatcher. He scanned the room, his shot pistol sweeping along with his gaze. When he was convinced no one lurked in the shadows, he holstered the monstrous weapon at his hip and slowly crept back to the maintenance hatch he had crawled out of.

Whatever had taken place in here, it was clear he wanted no part of it. Devros stuffed the bound mutant he had caught for the navigators back into the hidden passage and replaced the thick metal sheet which hid its access point.

Devros ducked low and lit his electro torch, freeing the bound mutant at his feet with a flick of his knife. While in the Nostromo's laboratory, he had head breaching tool being used on the heavily modified bulkward. It was a matter of time before the armsmen found the navigators. The pair might be immune to imperial sanctions, but Devros wasn't. He reckoned the Emperor had wanted him to intervene, and then get the hell out of there. Otherwise, why would it have gone down that way? It was best the twist catcher pocketed the extra gelts he's earn and forget this sordid mess once and for all.

"Looks like it's our lucky day," grumbled Devros, scratching at his eye patch, "huh, Zeph?"

The mutant nodded his head vigorously, despite being ignorant of how close he had been to a truly horrible end. He didn't ask why the twist catcher had let him go, he just ran. Devros figured that was the smart thing to do, so he followed.


	9. Chapter 9

_**Into the Breach:**_

_**Part 9**_

It had been a week since the Eldar's attack. Against the Chief Surgeons' advice, Sigs was hobbling about on crutches. He wasn't in the know as to what the ship was doing, still officially being unfit to perform his duties. But he had managed to at least get himself out of the recovery ward and in possession of some fine rahzvod those Vostroyans were so fond of. Sigismund at least knew the ship was in the warp because of the scratchy nagging at the back of his mind, the familiarity was uncanny. By the weird distortion in his ears, which came and went after long and irregular intervals, he also knew they were out of the calm and into a storm.

The captain returned his crew's salutes with a half-assed version involving crutches and made his way to Hubert's quarters, so close to his own yet so painfully far, considering his handicap. He could still feel the strange sack wrapped around his heart. It felt like suffocating in open air, like a crinkly plasteek wrap around your face. Magda had told him it was all in his head, psychosomatic, but it was unpleasant all the same. The old man had not taken well to this last warp jump and had been bed ridden for days now. Sigismund had heard bits and pieces of gossip and reports, this trip was being peculiarly hard on the crew. Accordingly, Hubert's quarters were being guarded in case he needed something, or madness gripped a poor sod in his general vicinity.

The armsmen saluted the off duty captain, which he returned with a cringe of his crinkly plasteek heart, and was allowed in to visit his oldest friends. Hubert was a sentimental old fop. Across his small but comfortable quarters, portraits of times long passed adorned every flat surface. Here a young captain, flashy bicorn hat affixed with purity seals, stood triumphantly with a boot on a gnarly beast's tusked snout. There, a pic taken from the _Semper Fidelis_' observation deck of a world lighting great blazes to form the ship's crest – a wreath of laurels crossed with two swords— in thanks or worship of its mighty power. The picture which caught Sigismund's attention the most was of his father and mother, flanked by Hubert, all smiling tiredly and eating out of conservation tins after a long bloody fight on some unnamed front. It was rare to have all three in the same pic, someone must have been close by, a crew member perhaps? The composition was far more spontaneous and genuine than most of the other pics.

"Hey, old man! What's this I heard about you not working, the minute I close my eyes you start shirking your duties?" Sigismund hobbled into Hubert's bedroom shaking the bottle of rahzvod in playful enticement. The old steward was struggling to sit up from his bed, pale sweaty brow making Sigismund regret his earlier banter.

"Belay that sailor, lay back down." The captain quickly sat by Hubert's bedside, kicking his crutches aside and scooting the chair closer. "You don't look well old friend. Should I call a medicae?"

Hubert shook his head, clearing his eyes of sleep's clingy film. "No, no Siggy, I'll be fine. It's just the damn nightmares, they are rather strong in these tides." The steward reached over to a glass of water he had prepared for his awakening, he finally grasped it after much difficulty and Sigismund's timely aid.

"Why are you out of the recovery ward, Siggy?" croaked the steward between sips.

The captain's guilty smirk was lighthearted. "I told Magda I'd give her a bottle of my finest if I could be discharged to bed rest." Sigismund indicated the clear grain alcohol with the thick vostroyan script along its label. "But I thought we'd drink it ourselves in celebration of my survival from enemy hands. What's it been now Hubert, fifteen or sixteen near death injuries?"

Hubert frowned, his bushy eyebrows a ridge of disappointment. The old man rested the glass of water on his chest, one hand loosely holding it in place as he took long wheezing breathes. "You have to stop that Siggy. The fact you have almost died …nineteen times by my count, is no joking matter."

Sigismund undress the rahzvod, pouring himself a cup from a soldier's tin. "The emperor favors the bo—"

'Throne sakes boy, don't give that rubbish!" The captain feint hurt feelings as he sipped the burning malt. Hubert's tone softened once more. "Your life is precious my boy. It's time you stopped this mad dashing you do and took your future seriously. You'll have a Dynasty to run, and a whole damn expanse to wrangle."

Sigismund slumped in his chair, his usual contrariness coming to the fore when matters of importance were mentioned. "If I'm fortunate Hubert, Anthonid will still be Dynast by the time I die."

The steward's free hand searched for Sigismund's, great pain visible in his eyes, but not for the rattling in the ancient's chest. "Why do you say such things my boy? I know for certain the Dynast looks forward to the day you inherit his charter of trade. The only thing holding you back from that knowledge is your careless ways. Your father is very proud of the man you have become, Siggy."

The captain threw back a rather large measure of the fiery drink in his hand and squirmed in his seat, grimacing. "I doubt that."

"He is," insisted Hubert with a firm grasp that bellied his age.

Sigismund returned the mark of affection and smiled, changing the subject as he often did when matters of the dynasty threatened to spoil his mood. "Tell me a story about my mother, Hubert. I saw those looks you give each other in the pics, what is that all about?"

Hubert scoffed at the accusation before he realised Sigismund's banter had evoked exactly the reaction he had sought. The steward calmed his thundering heart. It was only the crass foolishness of a soldier and not the pained insight of a bastard child which had made him unwittingly blather the truth.

"Sieglinde?" asked Hubert as he tried to wet his suddenly dry mouth. He took another sip of water as Sigismund poured himself another measure of that foul brew, it smelled suspiciously like distilled promethium. "What would you like to hear, Siggy."

"How about…" The captain's words were already beginning to suffer the alcohols effect, "The story of a Lady Dynast, traditionally bound to the chariot to await her husband's visits, nonetheless fighting at her husbands' side and giving as good as she got, from what I heard…"

Hubert wasn't overly pleased at the latter half of Sigismund's insinuation. It was no way to speak about his mother." Sieglinde… was an exceptionally strong willed woman. She was determined, quick witted, and adventurous. When Anthonid came to Medea in search of a wife, like his father before him, and his before that, he was smitten by the raven clan's princess." Hubert had to stop to catch his breath, drinking the last of his water, "She agreed to become his wife if he showed her the stars. From that day on there was nothing he could denied her. He trampled over almost every tradition the dynasty held, in one minor way or another, on her account. He was a far more impulsive man back then."

"Maybe that's where I get it," muttered the progressively more inebriated Sigismund.

"Somehow, Siggy, I doubt that. Now, Sieglinde was not only beautiful, but she was a fierce warrior. Before joining battle she would always cry out—"

"Glory or Death…" mumbled Sigismund.

Hubert's eyes went wide, his heart echoing the rising panic. "How did you—"

"I dreamt it while I was unconscious. I dreamt of her and of my father. I tell you, he was a damn bit more genuine then. Now, go on, tell me the good part." Sigismund's prompting getting lost in the reverberating tin he used to drink.

Hubert's shuddering breath help his hide the wetness of his eyes, he faced away from Sigismund to cough his lungs clear and clear the rheumy offenders. "Yes, I suppose he would be. Where…where was I Siggy?"

"Glory of Death," the captain repeated, now spilling some drink as he poured himself a new measure.

"Ah, yes." Hubert sighed and buried his worries in better times.

The night passed as Hubert reminisced at Sigismund's urging. As the hours ticked away, one man slipped into a drunken sleep while the other, unable to speak the words which had taken hold of his heart once before, stared at the cold steel ceiling of his chambers. By morning, his eyes had glazed and his body had stiffened with cold. Still, the corpse gazed at the near distance, struggling to find the courage to tell its son the truth.

The vice factotum entered her quarters. Like so many times before, she sealed its access with a complex alphanumeric sequence known only to her. A wave of her hand triggered the sensors embedded in her private chambers and dimmed the lights, as well as sent a pic feed to her waiting data slate. Hidden throughout the room were tiny mechanical insects the size of dragonflies which monitored every single inch of her private domain. When she was convinced that her quarters were empty, and had remained so since her last visit, she visibly relaxed and signaled the sensors to increase the luminosity of her surroundings.

The last few months had been tense. Sola had been playing a dangerous game, one which could well spell out her doom, as well as that of her allies. It was unwise to steal from a rogue trader, and it was suicide to do it in the amounts she had.

The vice factotum moved with familiar certainty as she stripped her body of the trappings of her office and slipped into the ablution chamber. She let the warm water cleanse her of the day's misgivings, and renewed her for the night's deadly game. She clothed herself in a thin cotton linen and sauntered over to her private data vault. The machine spirit of the data engine was fiercely loyal to her, having been worshiped and placated innumerable times each day, and shared its contents only with Sola, who it recognised through her mind-impulse-unit. Short of ripping the cortex implant, with its calculus logi and memorance core, from her skull, it was impossible to trick her personal desk cogitator. These days, it was the combination of the Omnissiah's glorious artifice and Sola's wiles which allowed her to survive.

She prodded softly at the base of her skull where the MIU interface rested, and pulled the thin data wire out to interface with her desk's socket. She closed her eyes as the communion began, data streamed directly into her mind and she slowly allowed herself to relax. She reached for a half drunk bottle of Bacchian gold and poured herself a dram of the thick amber liquor. The same ritual had taken place night after night for quite some time now. A security check when she arrived; a quick cleansing of her flesh; the beginning of the data communion; then the consumption of a large quantity of spirits while she micromanaged her assets. If she was lucky, she'd get an hour or two of sleep. If not, she might be forced to use one of the many compact needle pistols hidden in her quarters. It all depended on who came knocking at her door, and what they wanted.

A piece of the puzzle was missing. Sola couldn't help herself from seeking it out, and she had a sneaking suspicion that she would have to show her cards to do so. She sighed, looking towards the crypto-casket she knew was hidden behind her portrait of Sigs – a gift from the man himself, if you could believe his ego. Hopefully, she wouldn't need to use what was protected in its depths.

Rolling her shoulders and neck, Sola began reviewing the last six months of her intelligence reports.

A cornered beast is at its most dangerous. And if such a thing could be said within the wide expanse of the void, then the _Semper Fidelis_ was cornered and desperate. Its crew had been forced off Ultra Primaris. Its captain had been incapacitated. Its halls desecrated by a xeno assassin, and its navigators attacked. In the great emptiness surrounding the imperial warship, the silent ghosts of an Eldar fleet threatened to explode into action. Her crewmen failed in their attempts to locate and engage the fleeting xenos, but the predatory ships circled the _Semper Fidelis_, poised but never striking. It was impossible to understand the xeno mind, but it seemed the inhabitants of Biel-Tan had decided, inscrutably, to allow the imperials to live if they abandoned the system. The prowling Eldar ships had pushed the _Semper Fidelis_ to the edge of the system without so much as a shot from their canons. Only the cold inevitable threat of their presence.

By then the Nostromo had recovered and were well and able to jump to warp. The _Semper Fidelis_, unwilling to truly abandon the system, took refuge within the maddening tides of the warp. No Eldar ship would venture into this foul place, and its tides would bring the old warship back at the appointed hour. This scheme was the most unhinged yet hatched by a Nostromo mind, but it succeeded. Remi guided the ship into a warp pocket beyond the calm of the maiden world's system and dropped out of the empyrean long enough to mount the cadaver-like Pater into the navigator seat. Once synched with the ships system, and still somewhat lucid from his recent jaunt in the warp, Pater guided the _Semper Fidelis_ back into the roiling madness of the Sea of Souls. From then on, the strange mutation of their senior kept him awake and cognizant for far longer than anyone should be. Empowered by the warp, Pater navigated nonstop for nearly two month of subjective time, jumping in and out of the warp to test the passage of time. Sixty days, one thousand four hundred and forty hours, awake and cackling with glee, requesting neither food nor drink. It was a most unholy of journey for the Nostromo juniors. Each day defying their knowledge and assumptions of the limits of possibility.

But where the navigator's mind was immune to the corrupting touch of the warp, the more mundane minds of the _Semper Fidelis_ were not. Paranoid phobias and visions assailed its members. In random and unconnected events, save for the warps maligned touch, some had resorted to cut their flesh to excise their evil, or that of others; some had voided themselves from the airlocks screaming of damnation from within; dreams were wicked, their whispers following men and woman during their waking hours. The crew visibly paled, visibly shrivelled, and some crewmember's constitution simply failed them.

It was a shock when one of the most seasoned warp travelers succumb to its effect. Hubert's frailty only deepened as the days progressed. Strangely, the ancient seemed to accept his fate. The wounded Sigismund had been at his bedside at the end, just as Hubert had stayed at his. Though he tried, the captain could not convince his old friend to fight the coming of night. It was destined to be, Hubert had replied. He was only too happy to pay the toll. When Hubert finally passed away in his sleep, Sigismund had been bereaved. But when the captain had, in his morose lassitude, begun to put Hubert's things in order, the ancient's private records had made him inconsolable.

Despite visits from Sola, the captain had remained in his quarters for the remaining of the voyage, crippled by the truth he had uncovered and the untimeliness of the revelation. Bottles of the ship's finest, once brought to him by the now dead steward, were his only companions. But his misery was only beginning.

After those testing months, the _Semper Fidelis_ broke from the warp and joined the returning flotilla. What had once been three ships, was now bolstered to half a dozen ships with the aid contracted rogue traders. Captains Crimson, Boarson, and Falk had joined the Lucius Dynasty in colonizing the rich world of Ultra Primaris, bringing their own ships and resources, as contractually obligated. Amongst those assets where the Persephonian regiments within Boarson's _Bull_, a twelve kilometer long universe-class mass conveyor which also doubled as a mobile repair station, its extending arms allowing ships to dock, issue repairs, and resupply from its eight massive cargo holds. Crimson's _Stalker _was a fast meritech shrike-class raider, capable of gliding invisibly using its shadowfield generator – the Eldar's dark cousins' version of a holofield- and closing in on its prey before unleashing its devastating short range melta canons. Falk's _Valhalla_ was a defiant-class light cruiser and home to his renowned Fallschirmjager drop troopers, along with the air superiority crafts and bombers house in its two Jovian-class launch bays. The assembled fleet was a glorious sight, and the combined might of the rogue trader allies assured total void, air, and land domination. It was fortunate the Lord Dynast had showed such precautionary insight, for they would need it all against the Eldar.

But before colonization could begin, the matter of Sigismund's failure needed to be addressed. The Dynasty Senatorium was called to congress. It had taken all of Sola's considerable patience to sober and groom a recalcitrant Sigismund. Hubert's death had sent him into a spiral of self-loathing, or rather, unbeknownst to Sola, the truth of the scion's true lineage and the lie he had now lived for over 50 years. Where an unquenchable fire for adventure and mayhem once burned behind the captain's eyes, only ashes remained.

It didn't matter in the end. Had Sigismund been at the peak of his silver tongued charm, he still would have been made into his sister's whipping boy. The senators in their silken togas and embroided chitons stood in silence as Sola recounted the events. They had feigned that Sigismund's injury prevented him from speaking, and he surely looked the part. His haggard drunken binges as general lack of hygiene had left him worm-pale with sunken eyes and a scratchy salt and pepper scruff of a beard. He could barely stand, leaning on an ornate staff for assistance, in the center of the sand pit where orators and petitioners alike traditionally addressed the senatorum.

But somehow, Lucretia had been privy to some of the least palpable details of their misadventure. Truthfully, the downcast gaze of Sola's bodyguard had confirmed all that she had suspected. The virgin guard had been planted as a spy, too naïve to know it, and now too guilty of her part in Lucretia's scheme to make amends. Chastity had barely spoken a word to her mistress for a week now, and Sola doubted the child would ever truly return to her duties on the Chariot, compromised as she was. Perhaps the asset could be turned into Sola's gain, only time would tell.

Lucretia had painted Sigs as a brash and irresponsible commander, who had put himself in harm's way once too many time and yet again, had cost the lives as well as the loss of dynastic property. It was hard to counter her accusations, for even if it was cast in the darkest of lights, it was technically still the truth. Though she did not outright say it, she insinuated that Hubert's passing could be related to Sigismund's failings. It was a risky play, as Hubert had been a well-known personage, and news of his passing had garnered much sympathy from Sigismund's peers. It would simply have taken an objection from the captain's part and the matter would have been settled, but his guilty silence doomed him instead. Lucretia insisted that such a man did not deserve the captaincy of the warship which guaranteed the safety of the flotilla. In the end, her account had been far too damning for the senatorum to ignore and the Lord Dynast had cast judgement upon his heir and stripped him of his command until Sigismund was properly chastened. Lucretia's subtle smirk had stayed with Sola. The captain of the _Chariot_ had discredited her brother and installed her younger half-sister, the current Lady Dynast's daughter, at the helm of the _Semper Fidelis_ in one fell swoop. She had scored threefold wounds upon Sigismund's broken back. The first in his defamation, the second by winning the Lady Dynast's favor, and the third by installing an easily influenced child in charge of a ship, whose only peer was now Lucretia herself.

Sigismund had been invited to stay at the Lord Dynast's villa, for an indeterminate amount of time, which left Sola returning to the _Semper Fidelis_ with a painful realisation. She had invested time and effort in making herself indispensable to Sigismund. In return, she had been given free reign over many of the dynastic assets under his command. Her privileges would no doubt be severely affected by Lucretia's power play. Evangeline was a fine young lass, but she was a by-the-book commander, and the book would clearly agree that Sola was overextending her station, and this by a considerable amount.

Remi, who also had dealings with Sigismund, would feel the pressure now. As always, he made for a valuable ally, one which given the circumstances she could undoubtedly count on. Still, the myriad of probable scenarios and risk assessments she ran in her mind reduced her safeguards by an unacceptable margin. Sola had fled the Calaxis expanse with her mother, fled from her father's killers, and she would not be found defenseless and mewling at the end. She had promised herself that long ago.

"No king, no matter how loved by his people, can keep his crown," Sigismund had once joked at his expense. It had been the day Sola had become Vice Factotum, which seemed so long ago now. "Keep my coffers filled and I will always be able to convince my enemies to let me keep my head."

Oh silly, playful Sigs, he had not been wrong. Sola had already drawn a list of who to approach and which accounts to manipulate. Of how, when, and with whom to plan the bold strategy which bloomed inside her mind. With the colonization of Ultra Primaris, prodigious fortunes would change hands, many of which were unaffiliated with the dynasty proper but would be allowed to become deeply embedded within the business of building a world. It would be considerably easy, considering her own position in the dynasty, to whisper secret orders to the machine spirits which held power over the dynasty's financial data. Like the trickling sands of an hourglass, gelts would pour into her possession without anyone being the wiser, for one transaction could be made to hardly differ from the next, if you knew enough about numbers.

And Sola knew everything there was to know about numbers, and the Dynasty's own.

The Eldar had only made it easier for her. With the advancing fleet of imperial profiteers, the ships of Biel-Tan had thrown themselves into vicious hit and run attacks. Like a ponderous Cheloniidae, the fleet had closed ranks. They manoeuvered themselves into an inter-woven pattern of supporting fire, each protecting the other's vulnerabilities. The Eldar were forced to nip at the edges of the formation, where agile warships like the _Semper Fidelis_ could force them into their allies' fields of fire to be decimated or beaten off. The stratagem had been Anthonid's own, using his many years of experience and the combined strengths of his assets to effectively neutralize the Eldar threat. Only a fleet of warships would deter the Dynast's own, and he knew the Eldar would never risk leaving their craftworld dangerously unsupported. Like so many time before, Anthonid Lucius used the Eldar's fear of loss against them.

But in the meantime, the schools of Eldar ships still nipped and tore at the fleet's ships. The result had been a furious list of repairs to be enacted as soon as they circled Ultra Primaris and the _Bull_ opened its docking arms wide. A perfect opportunity to run up a plausible bill and pocket the extra "expenses." Slowly, Sola's various accounts fattened with stolen gelts, facilitated by the dynasty's own astropathic messages to the many banking houses and comercia clans which handled the four rogue traders' fortunes. With this money came opportunities. A whole slew of assets were mobilized, infiltrating the various ships by bribing its crews and officers, or turning mercenary companies' loyalty to her side. A network of contacts, agents, spies, and allies hired under the guise of serving the dynasty, slowly enacted her underhanded strategy. Sola, aided by her augmented mind and her natural genius, began to play Lucretia's game. Reporting to monikers and pseudonyms, Sola's subordinates began to ferret out the loyalties and dirty secrets of every soul she needed to entrap. Each night, she monitored her agents' progress, embezzled funds, and compiled files filled with promising blackmail.

Lost within the web she spun, she had procured futures in Ultra Primaris itself, watching as the dynasty had built her a legitimate fortune from their own pocket. Massive financial interest poured into the budding colony, as Sola knew it would, and she laced the traffic with her steps. The Lucius Dynasty and its allies had opened a new front for the Imperium and those who scrambled for new real estate and market opportunities poured an entire subsector's worth of wealth from across the Calaxis sector and throughout the Koronus expanse. Indeed, Admiral Horne of Battlefleet Koronus had even sent a naval emissary to discuss the building a way station to allow deep void patrols to refuel at Ultra Primaris. The planet was a gold mine, and the suspicious lack of Eldar activity in the now heavily travelled start system was almost entirely overlooked. The propaganda deployed to attract investors barely even mentioned the initial Eldar "problem."

Sola had marveled at it all. This was the power of a rogue trader dynasty. Not it's near limitless fortune, not its access to warp capable voidship, not its fancy weapons and its thundering house guards. Granted, those were all expressions of its might. But the true power of a dynasty was its ability to focus the interest of dozens of world at once. With a carefully placed word and an inviting bit of evidence, Anthonid Lucius had made himself the center of all activity for light-years around. The dynasty had made the lumbering giant that is the Imperium move, if only for a fraction of its existence.

And Sola had seen it all. Every scrap of data, when combined in her brilliant mind, showed her the big picture. Beyond the dynasty's success, beyond Sigismund's carefully orchestrated castration, and beyond even the rise of her shadowy power, laid the Eldar. They had bloodied the Dynasty's nose as a warning, one they should have known the Imperium would ignore. They had tried to stop the advancing rogue trader fleet from making planet fall and despoiling their world, but had barely slowed the juggernaut of free enterprise. And now, they remained silent? Still, despite their maiden world being raped? No, of course not. But the Eldar viewed Men as a scurrying pest, an infestation, and would no doubt deal with them in the same way. The xeno had not abandoned Ultra Primaris, they simply waited for the infestation to build its nest before exterminating the threat once and for all.

The question is, why hadn't the moment arrived yet? For six long months, the Imperium vomited forth men and machines alike, until the founding city of New Pariden rose from the empty plains. Colonists now numbered in the low millions, while soldiers of various dynasties, controlling interests, and guard regiments now mustered over a hundred thousand strong. The small outpost which had held a few hundred souls had been eclipsed, and still the Eldar bide their time, but for what? Did they intend the end to be so costly, so catastrophic, as to rob the Imperium of its desire to expand?

Sola had to know. Without this missing piece of the puzzle, despite her growing power, she would be unable to ascertain the threat. Whether the Eldar would strike before the discovery of her embezzling came to light was debatable. But the end result remained the same the same, her death. Her only hope now rested with Sigismund. As heir, he could protect her from what she had set in motion. He could even take credit for discovering and defeating the Eldar plot, letting Sola slink back into the shadows with her safety assured. But without him, it was simply a matter of time before she lost control of some precious variable and found herself leaning over the butcher's block. She needed to find Sigs, who had not been seen since his defeat in the Senatorum, and instill in him the burning desire to fight for his dynasty once again.

Failing that, the last card in her hand was the spirit stones her agents had recovered. The first had been the warlock's stone secured after his failed assassination attempt. A few had been located with Captain Crimson's cold trade connections, more still floating within the cold empty ships which had been destroyed while harassing the dynasty. Sola didn't relish using the Eldar dead as a bargaining chip, but she knew they would be exceptionally effective. Done right, she even believed she could garner the Eldar's good will, instead of spite.

The flight to the surface had been relatively comfortable. The House Consule Diplomaticum had arrange for a stately Aquila Lander to ferry him from the _Semper Fidelis_ to their affiliate headquarters in New Pariden. Both the Xi-Tan and the Modar had done as House Nostromo, establishing a foothold for their business in the newly occupied star system. Such embassies were strewn about everywhere the Navis Nobilite needed their interests safeguarded. The fact Remi had been called to attend a discussion, with Meyer and Pater – in a stasis sarcophagus of all things – along for the ride, roused every suspicious bone in his limber body.

They had been met by a servant at their destination, a private landing field close enough to New Pariden to be convenient and far away to be, well, private. Remi and Meyer had then been escorted to a heavily modified auto carriage, whose black gleam and tinted windows all but screamed "assassination target," despite the foot thick armor plates hidden in the chassis. That too, had been a pleasant ride. Nothing less would have been expected from a Nagivator House, especially concerning its most prized assets, but the lack of thinly veiled reproach unsettled Remi even more. If he was in any kind of trouble, which he was convinced this was, the House would have sent a second-rate atmospheric craft to ferry him, or an incompetent servant to greet him, or still at least a decided unfashionable ground escort. Meyer's content expression only deepened Remi's discomfort. It was just like that buffoon not to see the dagger coming. Their scenic drive had been interrupted by some Persephonian soldiers who manned a check point with all the indignity of naked fowl. Then they had proceeded to travel along the fresh new streets of New Pariden and into a wooded lot.

The hearse-like auto carriage delivered the Nostromos at the steps of a skeletal estate, its soaring peaked turrets stabbing at the sky with equally anorexic windows. The entire façade was chiselled from unblemished stone and boasted arched windows whose delicate curvature supported triads of similar architectural features. There were more flowery arrangements on the estate walls than the gardens surrounding it, and frankly, Remi thought it was a tad bit gauche. While Pater was being unloaded, the remaining Navigators were escorted through the towering hallways and their colonnades. Gold leaf was plastered on every available surface which wasn't already covered in rich carmine velvet. Remi revised his opinion of the outside façade. It was rather tamed compared to the baroque walkways, which Remi decided had justifiably wrestled the rubric of gauche from its predecessor.

Again, Remi found he could predictably count of Meyer's expression of awed bedazzlement to confirm his opinion of the interior decorator's questionable tastes. Informed to settle in and get comfortable by the staff, which parade a panoply of treats and liquors for their consumption, Remi allowed himself to credit his would be executioner for having already separated them from Pater and bewildered the weak willed Meyer. Whatever came next, Remi knew he was on his own, but then again, he always was.

An hour later, Remi was still waiting for it, his twitching mortal eyes dried from their suspicious scrutiny. The large double doors, each a lattice of intertwining wood carvings, opened to a pair of servants who ceremoniously stood by the portal's edges. The shuffling of deep Nostromo blues and purples heralded the arrival of the consuls. Three in fact, tough one wasn't technically shuffling about. A freakishly tall Nostromo woman appeared first, she stood head and shoulder above everyone else in the room, well above. Her skeletally thin frame and smooth featureless face convinced Remi that she was the perpetrator of the throne forsaken décor of the estate. Next came a hooded man with bejewelled fingers, the man's rings were so many that Remi thought the man possessed gilded augmentics at first. The last consul was a bloated toad of a man, aloft in a grav throne. The hairless sack of skin positively exuded faulty genetics. As one, the three Nostromo consuls took their place in front of Meyer and the still scrutinizing Remi. The more average of the three somatype spoke first.

"Thank you for coming with such alacrity my cousins. It warms the heart to- is there a problem Remi?"

Remi's squinty eyes flared open in surprise, they were onto him. "No, not at all _cousin_, please go on, I'm simply _dying_ to know why we were summoned to this dirt ball of a planet. Which, need I remind you, was home to angry Eldar so hell bent on my death they sent a kamikaze in orbit to have another go at me!"

"Yes," the bejewelled one said, slipping his hands into the large sleeves of his otherwise well-tailored vestments. "We are aware of the difficulties you have experienced recently, which are at the forefront of the reason you are here today."

Meyer was presently chewing on some soft gelled candy, the powdered sugar remains of which covered his lips.

"They are?" asked Remi incredulously.

"Yes, cousin," piped up the lanky one. Her voice ill-fitting for such a long necked lady.

"You were found unconscious in what can only be described as an unsanctioned laboratory." Added the grumbling fat one. "There are more than simply guards and servants in your tower Remi. We have here a report of the findings, which the Lucius Dynasty forwarded to their patriarch." The floating toad wiggled his chubby fingers at one of the attending servants, who brought him a dossier.

"Oh get on with it!" spat Remi, followed by Meyer literally doing the same with his mouthful of sweets. The unruly navigator had shocked the entire room with his candor. The large Consul awkwardly holding the file to his chest like a child about to be deprived of his toy.

"Clearly you know enough to sanction me, but yet you haven't," Remi was throwing himself into a tirade, the signs of which sent Meyer melting into his plush seat, pulling down his hood to obscure his face. "Any doddering fool would have realised the equipment was a genetor's and considering the importance of the subject to the Navis Nobilite, you got curious as to what I was up to. Am I right?"

Metal fingers began to open his mouth when Remi cut him off. "The equipment was a waste after the attack, but my personal files were rife with the data, which by the size of that dossier, you probably have a summary of. Realizing how marvellously ingenious I have been, you are now ready to overlook my indiscretion and the Imperial ban on gene-tech for my continued involvement in my research. Otherwise we wouldn't be having such a cushy conversation and the house's assassins would have dealt with me."

Meyer squeaked nervously in his seat. The gathered consuls exchanged looks teetering on the edge of bewilderment and rage, but their leader seemed to pick the more diplomatic avenue of expression. "Clearly cousin, you are not fit for anything which involves human contact. That is why the House has seen merit in your work—"

"Ah!" exclaimed the vindicated navigator.

"Yet has decided to continue your research elsewhere and under Meyer's direction."

"Me?" sputtered the vaguely Meyer shaped silhouette slowly being devoured by the sofa.

"Him?" gaped Remi, stupefied.

"Yes," smiled the main consul, clearly pleased with Remi's shocked expression of disbelief. "Cousin Meyer is much more suited to the task. He has followed the process admirably from its inception, and has all the practical experience required to run a laboratory. We have also noticed that he corrected some of your assumptions during the experimentation phase."

"But..but..he's an idiot!" insisted Remi.

"Hey! I am most certainly not!" rebuffed Meyer, now sitting at the edge of his seat and turning to Remi. "I am quite capable of continuing your research, you'd see that if you weren't always so busy stomping on everybody's self-esteem."

Remi's murderous glare made Meyer flinched, but to his credit the lesser navigator's buttocks sat firm in its place. Lacking the necessary traction, Remi continued his refutation of the consuls' decision.

"Unacceptable. This is my research and the house has no say on my intellectual property. This project lives or died by my say. Do you hear me?"

The tall consul sighed at Remi's lack of decorum, while her bulbous counterpart snickered. Their leader simply held the narcissist's buggering gaze and interlaced his fingers with the soft clinking of precious metal. "I'm afraid not cousin. You are a skilled navigator and with Pater's present state, the _Semper Fidelis_ will require a Primaris, our contract with the Lucius Dynasty stipulates such a guarantee. You are now officially Warp guide Primaris Remi, unless you prefer we hand over these files to the Inquisition.

"You… wouldn't dare." Growled Remi, his pineal eye itching to unleash his fury.

The consuls smirked in all the coordination of an acrobatic stage act. Clearly, they had rehearsed. "It would not be the first time House Nostromo had to feed the hounds of the Emperor a wayward son. Remi, take this promotion and be content in your duty."

Remi stood up so fast that the attending servants drew hidden weapons from their persons. This too had been planned, then. The house had engineered this slight and all the risk it entailed. "Thank you," dripped the venomous words from Remi's tongue. With a flourish which drew his robes around him, Remi stalked out of the boudoir. He powered his way through the halls of the estate and was steps away from exiting the embassy's front door when he stopped and quickly gave his surroundings a look. His eyes fell upon a priceless bust carved from peerless crystal. He stomped over to the achingly beautiful bust and sent the gorgeous piece of art tumbling to the stone floor with an angry swat. With a satisfied sneered, he straightened his robes before making his way out the door.

While Remi vented his anger, Meyer was being praised for his astute scientific mind. The consuls each exchanged a firm but supple handshake with the junior and sent the newly promoted house genetor to get ready for his upcoming transfer to the Calaxis sector and the Nostromo holdings therein. When Meyer disappeared with the servants in tow, the trio of ambassador exchanged guarded glances.

"That boy truly is a cretin," muttered the thin one.

"Indubitably," added the floating toad, ion field discharging periodically beneath his grav throne. "How sure are we that this Meyer will be able to advance the research? This mutagenic retardant of theirs is simply inspired, or so our experts assured me."

"Meyer won't be able to make more than mediocre advancements, the boy lacks vision," the bejewelled leader agreed. "Remi was the key. A shame he needed to be reminded of his place. But if he can be counted on for anything, it's his need to have his ego satisfied."

The consuls nodded in agreement.

"We will give him a few weeks then offer to make him nominal head of the project. We'll send him periodic reports and ask him to stamp his approval. His name will be all over the research and his ego will be sated enough for him to lend his vision to the project."

"What about Meyer?" asked the rotund consul, "won't he object? We just made him director of the project, after all."

"Meyer?" scoffed the senior consul as he examined his ringed fingers. "What will he do? Pout and stare at his boots?"

The trio laughed and indulged in a round of self-congratulatory compliments. All the while, Meyer dictated to a servant what he would need transferred from the _Semper Fidelis_, thanking the Emperor for his good fortune.

"This is absolutely ridiculous," complained Brigadier-Colonel Trevin to his command staff, who sat around his office in the beautifully lit Guard headquarter amongst the budding New Pariden spires. Persephonian blue uniforms filled the tactica operation center a dozen steps away from Trevin's stately bureau. The fact that the intelligence company of his regiment had time to play cards was testament to the commander's frustration. Even his hardcore veteran command squad lounged around, smoking lho sticks which filled the air with lazy white trails.

"This is not what we agreed to. The regiments are going to manure, gallivanting around the city making a farce of our duty in drunken binges. I can't even reach that Emperor-damned rogue trader. Is this how he conducts himself? Making promises and then disappearing without delivering explanations?"

Jensen Melot exhaled a billowing cloud of smoke and worked the ached from his neck. He had spent too long staring at the domed ceiling's elegant fresco, filled with naked women sauntering about. "Are you mad at him for sticking us in charge of local policing, overqualified as we are, or because we aren't dying by the thousand at xeno hands? Cause I'm confused Gus."

The command sergeant was blinking his reddened eyes, no doubt recovering from an alcohol induced debauchery himself. Trevin took a deep breath and steadied himself against his desk, fingers splayed to take his slouching weight after pacing about the room aimlessly. "Sigismund Lucius promised us we'd be doing the emperor's work. This isn't it!" the angry commander was pointing a finger at what was outside his window, the beautiful scenic valley which surrounded the rapidly growing city like a lazy afternoon lover.

"Not all the Emperor's work is glorious Augustus." The ever smiling Frederick Lancer was holding a cup of cherry, its slim stem extending between his fingers. "I rather quite like it here. It has a refreshing palette of colors, and far fewer orks." The man had fancied growing a thin black mustache, though it put him in mind of his aristocratic lineage, his meandering eye often made it look quite silly instead.

"Yeah, well, I'd rather be gutting something that squeals like a pig than watch people push paper all day." Corvin was witling at a coffee table's leg, Emperor knew where he had found it, with his large Galvan survival knife. "Every day we waste in this environmentally conditioned spire is a day the xenos get stronger." Wood shavings accumulated between his legs as he sat crouched over his knees. Corvin had not been re-socialised quite as successfully as the rest of them after Kursk, not that he had truly ever been civilised to begin with.

Trevin stabbed two pointed fingers at Corvin in agreement. "That's what I'm talking about."

Steld closed the glass pane doors that separated Trevin's study and the tactica center, having caught the end of Corvin's comment. "The Emperor provides," she quoted sarcastically. Laura walked her way to Trevin and dropped a dossier on his empty desk. "Surveyors staking their claim on some lush lands up north have come upon a strange totem. Clearly, they had the sense to report a possible xeno structure. Though they had no idea what they found, I doubt you'll need a second opinion on what built it."

Augustus opened the dossier and skimmed the coordinates, land claim contracts, and well worded petitions for Imperial Guard intervention, finally lifting a detailed pic engraving of a looming, shoddy built tower, full of banners and brutish glyphs. Trevin slowly turned the pic for the others to see. "We were warned about Eldar, but no one said anything about this."

Corvin flashed his disturbingly wolfish smile. Jensen snuffed his lho stick in a golden ashtray, an air of quiet confidence surrounding him. Freddy was less stoic about it, he adopted a noble countenance to try and hide the shaking in his brandy holding hand.

"Dear me, no. Not them again." Whimpered the shaky aristocrat.

"I'll go get my med kit," added Steld.

Sola Villanueva, vice factotum of the _Semper Fidelis_, had just finished a meetings with the flotilla's High Factotum. The titles had always struck Sola as slightly ridiculous. Each ship had an officer in charge of negotiating its expenses. Part accountant, part salesmen, it was a Facto's business to keep the ship they served on within budget and in the black- the ink color of positive income notations. The only reason for a Factotum to have rank above his peers, was to keep the Dynast in control of his assets. The better to limit unacceptable expenses and keep an eye out on his officer's habits. Normally, the idea of reporting to an oversight officer like the High Factotum would have been testing, but contrary to the belief, Sola had taken advantage of the occasion to divert the High factotum's attention away from her embezzling, and the trip had been the perfect excuse to go looking for Sigs.

The _Son of Ultramar_ was a sight bigger than the ship she served on, at least three times as much. A light cruiser in its own right, the flag ship of the dynasty had most of its living space converted towards tourism. It was hard to imagine it like that, but that's what it was. Great vaulted corridors ate up precious space aboard a ship, but not only did the _Son of Ultramar_ boasted such questionable architecture, but the entire ship's spine was a largely open area, complete with roaming meadows, a gladiatorial coliseum, a melodium concert hall, and a vast array of entertainment quarters and shopping galleries. Wandering these attractions were the preening elites who spent planetary sums to voyage aboard a ship in the authentic Koronus Expanse, with its many dangers and wondrous sights. These clients often lived years aboard the craft, or as long as it was prudent to stay away from home.

Sola had lost herself in the crowd of visitors, Chastity following her with lackluster steps. The girl had been an unwitting pawn and Sola had forgiven her for her part in Sigismund's misery. The girl however, had not shed the burden of guilt as easily. She still performed competently, but the heart of her duty had been robbed of its righteousness. Perhaps her naiveté had been the key to her function, for even as Lucretia debriefed Chastity after the return of the _Chariot_, the girl had still been oblivious to the betrayal she was being part of. The virgin guard looked up from her boots as she revisited her sin only to realise that Sola had utterly disappeared. The crowd was peculiarly thick here and it was hard to spot Sola, who had taken to coloring and wearing her hair in strangely random styles these last few month. A whimper of panic welled inside Chastity before she realised her lack of vigilance was not entirely her fault. She had ditched, purposefully.

As the crowd marveled at her statuesque power armor's many masterful details, Chastity rested her bolter on her thigh's magnetic clamp. It seemed her days as a bodyguard were also over. She unclipped her ermine trimmed cloak from its brooch and folded the fabric into a conspicuous square, which she tucked under her armpit. She had no right to wear the bright red and gold emblem of the virgin guard. Sighing, Chastity looked at the milling visitors around her, and decided she would join them in sightseeing for a bit.

The dynast sat by the marble fountain which formed the piece de resistance of his inner courtyard. He cupped the crystal clear water and let it fall over his foot, soothing the soles with a twisting knuckle to work the knots out. He could hear his praetorian guards marching up behind him with the visitor he had requested. Their tall crest of black and white equine hair bobbed as they bowed low, ancient leather cuirasses crinkling with the motion. He flicked a hand over his shoulder to dismiss them, and the ceremonial guards marched away.

"It is customary to have meddling strangers shot, when found skulking around one's villa, did you know?" tease Anthonid Lucius.

"I was unaware walking in plain sight was synonymous with skulking…" Sola answered.

Anthonid spared her a glance for the first time, her imperious posture matching her tone. The old ruler chuckled.

"No wonder he likes you." The dynast stood from where he had been soothing his feet, and nonchalantly slipped into his sandals once more, the pristine white of his draped toga starkly contrasting the deep Ultramar blue of his chiton underneath.

"My lord?" asked Sola as she unfurled her crossed arms, decidedly less confrontational now that the piercing eyes of the dynast were on her.

"My son, the one you undoubtedly came to visit. None of his girlfriends' ever managed to evade the security before. And I believe you were smart enough to know you wouldn't best my personal guard either, which is why you blatantly walked out into plain sight."

The old man as sharp, but she had expected as much. Sola had used her credentials to travel the areas she was permitted, a data spike to confuse the doors locked to her where she wasn't, and a great deal of cool under pressure to wander in the Lord Dynast's own villa. She swallowed silently, keeping her reaction as neutral as possible.

"Why does everyone think I'm his girlfriend?" was all she muttered.

"Walk with me Vice Factotum", the command was a kindly as it was absolute. With a wave of his arm, Anthonid set a course through the halls of his spartan abode. Great braziers' burnt real wood, filling the air with a scent rarely experienced by void borns. Even Sola, which had grew up on a planet's soil, had never actually smelt burning wood, such was the forge world. The walls were whitewashed plaster and the cool stone pillars which bore the villa's loads were simple, unrushed things. The worth of this kind of natural material was worth millions, Sola knew, but no other ostentation could be found. The Lord Dynast lived like the warriors of old would have, on his ancestral world of Ultramar.

"I hear pleasing, and at times not so pleasing things about you Miss Villanueva," began Anthonid. They walked the halls at a slow pace, one the dynast no doubt knew would give him time to address what he wished to. "Skilled, voracious, determined, all are good qualities in an officer. Manipulative, dominating, shrewish, all are bad qualities in a wife."

Sola was about to object when Anthonid's brow raised an inch. Her silence let him continue, "though your designs may not involve Sigismund's title and rank, his decisions have not always been thought through. In other words, he is in a pitiful state at the moment, in the grips of yet another one of his adolescent tantrums. I believe it is your intent to draw him back to a semblance of dignity, am I right young lady?"

Sola nodded. "Yes."

"You may very well manage it, for which he would no doubt be entirely too grateful. But even were he presentable anew, the Senatorum would still not give him back command of the _Semper Fidelis_."

"But aren't you lord and master of this dynasty? Can't you just… do it?" What kind of ruler is vetoed by his subjects, thought Sola.

"No matter what blame be brought to bare, no ruler will suffer its burden as long as his subjects had a hand in its making," quoted the dynast. "Do you know what that means young woman?"

"That as long as you're not the only one giving orders, you won't be left to clean up the shit?" summarized the annoyed factotum. Being lectured is not something she often endured, and it chafed at her.

Anthonid canted his head in recognition of the answer, even if uttered in a simpleton's tongue. "I would rather you not disgrace the words of this dynasty's founder, but yes. This system of governance has existed for millennia, and none of my predecessor have ever suffered the crippling dissent which has splintered so many dynasties during its time."

Anthonid and his visitor had now arrived at an oaken door, two praetorians standing guard at its side. The Lord Dynast inclined his head and waved her over to the door. His little speech having ended exactly at the chamber's entrance. Sola wondered if the lord of the Lucius Dynasty was ever denied in the execution of his schemes. Then she remembered Sigismund, surely his misadventures were not part of Anthonid's plans. Could it be that his son, in all his rebellious fervor, had been the only person to truly deny the Lord Dynast? And more to the point, had the wayward scion's intentions always been to do so?

As the doors opened onto a room veiled in thick drapes, with bottles of various intoxicants strewed about and more than a few items of female clothing, Sola realised she gave Sigs far too much credit sometimes.


	10. Chapter 10

_**Into the Breach:**_

_**Part 10**_

The scion might have been sequestered against his will, but he was far from a prisoner. His darkened chambers were as stark as the rest of the Dynast's villa, but not nearly as tamed. Sparse furniture decorated the room in a minimalist fashion, but a distinctive Sigs-like-flare made the room his. Sola shook her head in disapproval as she explored what now looked like a military barrack turned whore house. Decanters of beaten brass littered the room, their vinegary tinge coating the air of the chamber. Other smells lingered as well, clinging to the hanging curtains which muffled and hid the room's occupants. Sola's attentive mind struggled to ignore the scents but they registered with disturbing clarity, which left her shuddering in her steps. She easily imagined bodies writhing in coitus, sweating and shedding their humors, all of which had left their trace for Sola to find. When she finally reached Sigismund's bed chambers, Sola remained unfazed by the scene her senses had long pieced together.

Three women were entwined in the embrace of their patron, every last one drunken and undressed. Togas, chitons, silken robes, and linen undergarments were shed about the tussled surface of the vast bed. The women, all so similar in appearance they were either siblings or the victims of the latest trend, wrapped their milky white limbs around each other to recover the warmth they had shed during their carnal exploits. Sigs, as oblivious as his mistresses, sported a bushy salt and pepper rug on his haggard face. He nestled between the women, daring to break into a sweaty sheen while the sleepy woman latched onto him desperately for heat. Sola tutted, she hoped Sigs had been more selfless during his lovemaking than after.

One woman started in surprise while the two others half groaned, awakening drowsily. The sister closest to the vice factotum sported a newly acquired welt on her dove white thighs, her confused objection at the early rising more personal than her sisters. When the painted trio had finally understood that they were no longer welcomed to the scion's bed, they gathered their linens and left, their naked feet slapping on the cold stone beneath them.

"Sigs, wake up." Sola prodded him. "Sigs!"

The scion grumbled and turned away. The stench of the night's exertion mingled with that of his unwashed body. Sigismund was far too intoxicated to make sense of her prodding. Thankfully, the facto had been prepared for such an eventuality. After having dealt with him following Hubert's death and his summons to the Senatorum, Sola had anticipated the intensity that his debauchery would take. She let her fingers search within the pouch at her hip and pulled out an auto-dispensing injector. Sola pushed the erstwhile captain onto his side, rolling her eyes at the sweat stained sheet beneath him, and stabbed him in the meat of his buttock. The facto quickly scampered off, knowing full well what the dose of Detox would provoke in the captain. In a few seconds he would be voiding his body of every toxin therein and by whatever means necessary.

When the purging began, Sola stood outside the bed chamber and smirked at the well-deserved discomfort Sigismund was experiencing. The vice factotum was not a cruel woman. She did not take pleasure in the pain of others. But considering the trouble she had gone through in the last few months, the sound of Sigismund painfully retching away his indulgences was a tiny sliver of recompense.

-/-/-/-/-

Blood shot eyes stared with simmering resentment. They had not left Sola for quite some time now. The exhausted scion was chest deep in a Romani bath, the beautiful pool of steaming mineral water soaking his tired flesh. Though the bath itself could welcome a dozen guests, only Sigismund benefitted from its sobering effect while Sola sat on its raised edge, fingers barely threading upon the water's jade green surface. Sola's eyes had also been locked on Sigismund, watching the wretched man groan from his discomfort as he eased his shaking body into the rejuvenating waters. The steam made the room stuffy and humid, its tiled surfaces locking in the heat.

"That was uncalled for," Sigismund finally croaked through parched lips.

"What you judge appropriate these days is probably an indication of how terribly wrong you are, Sigs."

The scion's hooded eyes blinked groggily, relenting before the argument even began. "Why are you here?"

"The Dynasty needs you Sigs. Its time you stopped whining like a newly blooded virgin and get back into the game." Sola cupped the water and let it fall from her hand, the tinkling stream echoing in the private bathroom."

"Virg—" Sigismund scoffed and disappeared beneath the water for a few seconds before rising again and slowly shaking his head, regretting the motion immediately, head pounding with dizzying vertigo . "I'm not interested in what the Dynasty needs." He groaned, wincing away the stabbing in his brain. "Besides, if it needed me I would be hearing it from someone else than you."

"Not unless it wasn't aware of the danger," baited the vice factotum. For a fraction of a second, Sigismund seemed to take the hook, but only for a second. Instead, he rolled his shoulders and eased some stiffness from his joints. What could possibly have happened to rob Sigismund of his zest for life, Sola wondered. Where once the man had burned with a desire to venture into the unknown, wrestle with its monsters, and charge heroically at the slightest possibility of glory, he now wallowed in disgrace. The pyres had burned out of his eyes and not even their ambers remained, only ash. There was barely a flicker of the man Sigismund had been.

Sigismund groaned sullenly. "It's still none of my business. Tell the Lord Dynast that, or any of his hundreds of lackeys, and leave me alone. It's not like I ever did anything to make the old goat happy. Not that he deserves to be..."

There was a certain spite in him which Sola had never witnessed before. Sure, Sigismund was often unhappy with his father's commands or his comments, but it was always a simmering resentment which clouded his complaints, not outright contempt. "You do know it wasn't his fault, what happened that is, right?" reminded Sola.

"Oh yes, quite. It was my _sister_'s fault. That hairy old bitch. Yet another waste of my time in an equally wasted life." The scion grumbled lowly, slapping at the water like a petulant child who knew to hold his tantrums back, least he be punished again.

Sola sighed and shook her head, crossing her arms on the bath's raised edge and resting her chin on them. Sigismund was an enigma to most, and certainly, he was difficult to read even for Sola. One moment he was a sniveling brat, another a suave debonair, the next a brilliant commander and the most radiant hero she had ever seen. Not that Sola had witness many acts of heroism in her life. She doubted true heroes even existed anymore, at least the kinds which stories were written about. Occasional heroes, yes, and Sigismund certainly was one of those. Still, something wasn't right, his moods were usually mercurial, and this one should have passed long ago.

"I've seen you bounce back from a hundred falls, Sigs. What is this really about, is it Hubert?" asked Sola genuinely. Concern tugged at her heart. It was a rare creature, Sola's worry. It could fill her at the mention of a thousand things, but it never voiced itself quite like when Sigismund faltered. That foolish man, whose vision had seen through a hundred waifs and handed her the keys to his kingdom. It was the dying of that vision which shook her to the core, and which threatened to leave a cold and hopeless galaxy in its stead, full of hate and war.

Sigismund's face was suddenly etched with hidden pain, his brow furrowed, and his eyes filled with a sea of unshed tears. Before the unbearable broke him, he disappeared beneath the steaming water again. He stayed there, sitting at the bottom of the pool, occasional bubbles floating to the surface. He only rose again once the danger had passed. He postured with indifference, but Sola knew him too well to believe it. His naked, scarred body bobbed against the lapping waters as he swam to the bath's edge in search of a much needed refreshment, which had been left by servants for this exact purpose.

"There are words which exist Sola," he said as he poured himself a drink from a waiting decanter, "which have destroyed worlds when uttered." He sipped at the therapeutic contents meant to sooth his self-inflicted pain, speaking with his back to Sola. "Commands which have lain men and beast alike to fallow and rot; which have set empires ablaze and forced species into extinction." Sigismund sounded weary just from recalling the memories. These were not the kind you made reading dusty pages, but rather lived and carried throughout a lifetime. There was pain in his voice to, and regret. "Words I have uttered in the name of family, tradition, and duty. Words I have unleashed at the lure of glory and for fortunes immeasurable." He finally turned, eyes meeting Sola's. "But I have never given life to words like those I carry now. Words which Hubert was unable to speak. Words which were kept from me to protect a Dynasty. Sola, the fear that everything I have ever done has been useless and vain gnaws at my bones."

Unbidden, Sola's implants whirred into life, cross referencing dossiers, histories, and the slew of shadowy knowledge which had come into her possession these last months. Data overlaid her vision, fed from her remembrance logi, until she silenced the process with a mental command. What Sigismund was struggling to say came from a place logic alone could never understand. It came from a place where humanity and passion ruled.

There was a raw vulnerability in his voice, in the distorted motions of his body under the water's swell. It was disturbingly inviting. She couldn't help herself but be drawn in. She listened to Sigismund's words, marveling at the truth behind the mask. There were no performances here, no skilled manipulation or calculated stratagem. Only a man stripped of the armor he had worn as a dynast's son. Even haggard and ill, he projected such a presence, that it was no wonder the _Semper Fidelis_' crew was utterly devoted to him. That even after these long months, they still silently whispered his name in hopes for his return. Sigismund had a magnetic personality which drew followers to him as surely as lungs drew air. It was all part of a vital, energetic requirement of Sigismund's life. To serve as the shield of his people, to be needed. His name was Sigismund, and a child had never been so perfectly named. He was the hand, the protector, the one who sought victory in defense of his ideals.

It was the broken remains of a man denied his vital essence, who spoke to her now.

"I can't tell you if that's true Sigs. Not if you don't let me in. how can I help if I don't know what's hurting you like this?" Sola looked at the man, soaked in wisps of vapors, a child lost in a horrid galaxy, hidden in a man's body. A child like she had once been, and in some ways still was, hidden deep beneath the armor of her logic. Sola was unsure of what to do to still Sigismund's heart, but she hoped it wouldn't leave hers in tatters. With a gesture of her hand and pleading eyes, she bid the scion to turn his eyes from her and shyly began to strip her relics of office from her bodysuit.

Sola feared she would seem untrue. She slipped from her body glove and into the water. Somehow the symmetry felt more honest. Thought the scion felt no shame towards his nakedness, he had chosen to strip his heart of its defenses and share it with Sola. There was a purity in the act of shedding her clothes which lightened the scales of Sola's mind. Her own naked, primal self a testament of the human need to be heard, understood and forgiven. A confession of the soul, cleansed through its embodiment in the flesh. Sola's sweeping arms drew Sigismund's attention as the facto glided along the waters. As the scion turned he could see, stamped on Sola's shoulder blade, the Mechanicus' mark of ownership. Alternating stripes of ink scarred her flesh, denoting her past and her future in the binary tongue of the techna lingua. Strange how a tiny thing like that could command such power over fate; like a heraldic crest, Sigismund remarked to himself bitterly.

Sigs' buoyed steps took him to Sola's side, her enraptured gaze ambrosia to his lashed soul. He rested his head against her shoulder, a thin trickle of steaming water the only barrier between their naked flesh. The strange intimacy only deepened the plight of his sorrow and Sola, once again, was unable to resist the lure of his suffering. She slipped her fingers in his wet locks, caressing his scalp with uncharacteristic affection.

If the Sigismund she knew had truly died from his unshed burden, she would resurrect him. She would need him. She would breathe life into the ideals which kept him aloft, and if they proved too shattered to mend anew, Sola would give him reasons to look past the horizon again and force the horrors which lay there to hesitate once more before impinging on the Emperor's holy domain.

Sola sighed, but not in worry. She had decided to share, for the very first time, her greatest secret. The relief which flooded her was unexpected and she struggled to keep her voice from faltering as she put her life in Sigismund's hands.

"When I was a little girl, my mother named me Seraphina," Sola began. If his secret was such a weighty burden, than she would ease it from his shoulders by sharing her own. "She fell in love with a magos, and he with her. It was a forbidden romance which bore only one fruit, me. But it was not the last sin my father would commit in the eyes of the Cult Mechanicus."

Sigismund listened to Sola's strange confession. Slowly, as her tragic story found the words of express itself, he remembered something the darkness of his own aguish had swallowed for so long. He remembered that pain's harvest did not care for which field it reaped its bounty from.

-/-/-/-/-

The Imperial Guard's response to the Ork threat had been swift. Within a week, an assortment of battalions from all five Persephonian regiments had been assembled at the northern outpost, some four hundred kilometers from New Pariden, with all the necessary support a budding ork menace deserved. Trevin had received the Lord Dynast's blessing in curtailing this disturbing incursion, and all the assistance he required from the rogue trader fleet in orbit. Only the ability to command an outright orbital bombardment had been denied the Brigadier-Colonel. In any instance, it would have helped little as the core of the ork horde was hidden within the bowels of a mountain range and consisted of highly mobile assets. These assets, were the reason for this general staff meeting.

The outpost had been designed to be the eyes and ears of New Pariden in the northern continent and so offered little luxury, Trevin was fine with that. The crowded briefing room was now filled with senior battalion officers and their aids, a handful of enginseers and ministorum chaplain, a commissar clad in their usual black, munitorum scribes and tacticians, as well as Trevin's own guard detail. In this room was everyone who needed to know what command's strategy for dealing with the Orks was, and all those who would benefit from the knowledge of the Kursk veterans.

Ironically, Trevin and his misfits were surrounded by men and women who had every right to challenge their authority. High lords and knights of the Persephonian gentry were arrayed in their luscious cloaks and heavy medals, each outranking Trevin and his ilk back home, but who had sworn their fealty and their swords to their leader in the Guard. Their eyes were bright with the promised glory to come. Trevin wondered how many would die in the days to come. Perhaps if they listened, he could spare a few their untimely fate. The young nobleman ran his hand in his hair and smirked, remembering his fiancée's words when he left their home in the city.

"Your officers have been sitting idle for many months now Gus, they will want to get stuck in the fight and you know it. Play their game, coax their ego, and make them think you're just like them, they will listen all the more for it. It will save their lives."

Josephina had been right of course. He was high born himself, but he had spent years in the trenches with the common foot soldier, and a decade like a savage in the wastes. These soldiers would be soft and foolish compared to his comrades from Kursk, but he wouldn't hold it against them.

"Well gentlemen, and fair ladies," Trevin began as he stood at the briefing lectern in the cramped, and now sweaty, room. "Seems we were called to duty fighting old friends of ours." The assembled cadre of officers chuckled. Already, they had taken the 1st's legacy as their own. They believed themselves ork slayers, though they had never even faced one yet. It was better they laugh, Trevin reminded himself, if they knew the truth they would soil themselves instead. "As is often the case, we have no idea where the greenskins came from. These bastards grow out of the grown after all."

Major Ghalla smirked with his fellows, his youthful face hiding decades of juvenat treatments and the beginning of a portly gut. He was from the 5th, commander of the hussars and their armored fist. "Perhaps we should send the caretakers to trim these unseemly weeds, then." The new blood laughed at his jest. Trevin raised a hand and quieted the officers. Behind him, Jensen lit himself a lho stick and took the time to run a comb through his hair- which was still non regulation length. It was clear in the command sergeant's demeanor he was already betting on who would be the first officer cadre casualty of this war.

"Nonetheless my friends, they are here. However they came to be is not the issue, for we know what they want." Continued Trevin.

"And what's that Brigadier-Colonel? What could beast possibly want?" interrupted another captain from the hussars. This time, Trevin would nip the candour of his officers in the bud.

"Your blood…"

The commander's tone, along with his stone cold glare, put the gathered nobility in their place. Few could match the stern look the madmen of Kursk deployed, it was already regimental myth. Many took out scribble pads or signaled to their aids to be attentive. From opposite his place at the head of the room, Trevin saw Lord Commissar Otto nod in approval. The executioner still had not introduced himself personally, though Trevin knew him by way of the reports the man had filed. A man who had survived as long as he had, through countless warzones during his service to the Golden Throne probably cared little for formalities. When the room was attentive and ready, Trevin flashed them a reassuring smile- the carrot to his stick- before getting to the thick of the matter.

"We are confronted by an unknown number of orks, led by an unknown boss. Munitorum tacticians estimate a few thousand orks with an assortment of odd boys, perhaps a splinter group from a larger waaagh." The adept which had prepared the tactical dossier beamed with pride as his data was laid out. The grin he so happily sported was short lived. "I believe otherwise."

Frowns and darted glances filled the room. Trevin had just blatantly stomped all over the munitorum's expertise. In short, he had questioned the way things were done, and the inviolable wisdom of the chain of command. What's worst, he had done it publicly. Trevin would have precious few moments to explain himself before the black clad killer at the back of the room intervened. Strangely enough, Lord Commissar Otto was watching the commander attentively. Perhaps he had been informed of Trevin's maverick tendencies.

"Orks possess a primal cleverness, but they rarely have the foresight to plan ahead, not in any considerable way. If this were a splinter group we would have known about them along ago. These orks behave strangely for their kind, the reconnaissance shows us as much." Trevin gave the signal which killed the lumens. Behind him, a projector blew up pictures taken by orbital auspex scans and flight missions performed by lightning scout interceptors. Only experienced troopers would have realised the depth of the threat they faced, and one such veteran now presented his observations, despite the fact that munitorum advisors had come to a different conclusion.

"What we first took to be klan banners were actually transmission towers. Crude, I'll give you that, but functional." The Brigadier-Colonel carried on, lighting up locations of the magnified projection. "No ork mob has been spotted outside of the mountain range except when moving fast from one location to another with their vehicles. The infrastructure to support the light armour the orks deploy is nowhere to be seen, so they must be within the mountain itself." Trevin let his words sink in. "The orks are hiding their assets, gentlemen, and not with camo nets or "inspired" paint jobs. They are hiding their movements, troop numbers, resource access, and coordinating the lot with a makeshift comm net, one which we were unable to pick up until we were at their doorstep. These are deliberate tactics specifically meant to foil imperial methods."

"What are you suggesting, Brigadier-Colonel?" the crowd twisted in their seats, hearing the gravelly voice of the lord commissar speak for the first time, and what they hoped would be the last.

Trevin nodded to the executioner. "Dynastic intelligence informs me that this world is a sacred place to the Eldar, which means they would not have allowed the orks to set up shop. We can count the Eldar out as potential masterminds. Under normal circumstances, they would have been our best bet, but not here, not on this world."

"Who's responsible?" The gravelly voice commanded more than asked. Claiming that orks were intelligent enough to outwit men was clear-cut heresy. The kind men were shot for, the kind that undermined moral, the kind the _Infantryman's Uplifting Primer_ had been specifically made to counter. Orks were terrible creatures and the only saving grace in the eyes of the poor sods sent to fight them was their supposed stupidity.

"No one who matters now," lied Trevin, his prime suspect being one of the rogue trader's in orbit. He heard rumors during his time of the _Semper Fidelis_, rumors of sanctioned xenos. "What matters now Lord Commissar, is that we treat this threat as it should be. We have ourselves a clever warboss. One which knows at least some of our tricks, and who probably hasn't the numbers to throw himself at us the way they usually do. It'll be a sneaky git, and if we wait too long, he'll have what he needs to burn this world to ashes."

Trevin's assessment was dangerously close to being toxic to moral, but it was realistic. Something commissar Otto seemed to concur with. "Carry on, Brigadier-Colonel."

Trevin cast aside the report the munitorum had prepared for him, using instead the notes he and Misfit had furiously pieced together the night before. Trevin might have been in command but he served at the pleasure of the munitorum and the commissariat, as well as the support of his peers and the purse of the Lucius Dynasty. Should he slip up even once, with any of his patrons, and he would be strung up so fast even the Emperor wouldn't be able to intervene.

With that in mind, he outlined his orders for the Persephonian battalions, combining all of their assets to hunt and kill the ork forces, uproot them from the mountain, and burn every damn spore their filthy kind shed in the process. Using a third of his planetary forces, Trevin would scour the northern regions. The 2nd's Galvan inspired formations would ferret out the orks' hidden outposts and sabotaging them. The 3rd's heavy infantry would form a reef onto which any ork raiding party could be broken, especially with the help of the 4th's siege artillery. This would leave the 1st and 5th, mounted infantry and armored fist respectively, to wander the rolling meadows from east to west and strike the highly mobile enemy forces wherever they could find them.

What objections Trevin's stratagem had evoked were effectively plugged by the assistance of Lord Captain Falk's _Valhalla_ and his soldiers. Holding in geosynchronous orbit above the northern continent, the void ship could dispatch wings of aeronautical crafts to offer over watch, reconnaissance, attack runs, or medevac missions for stranded guardsmen. Trevin was also relieved to have Falk's Fallschirmjagers at his disposal. The orbital drop troopers could reinforce any position in little more than twenty minutes, falling from the skies aboard pods which were very similar to the ones the Emperor's own angels of death used. Yes, thought Trevin, this plan would work out nicely.

Juts at the Brigadier-Colonel was about to close the briefing a frazzled lieutenant barged into the staff room unceremoniously. He teetered as the gaze of the officers present all fell on him, and swallowed loudly as he took off his cap. "Forgive the intrusion my lords," he stammered a bit and added a nervously, "and ladies. But a xeno has surrendered at our gates."

Murmurs filled the stifling room before Jensen piped up. "You mean to tell me an ork surrendered to you?" The command sergeant didn't even try to hide is smirk of disbelief.

"No Sirs… not an ork. That would be terribly silly." The silent stares of the crowd prompted him to get on with it. "It's an Eldar my lords," his fingers scratched at the edge of the cap he was holding. "And ladies," he added again.

-/-/-/-/-

Elamnyl was sitting in small room devoid of any decoration. A mirrored window occupied half of a wall to his left. The other walls dropped like grey sheets of pulverized stone, which he guessed was what they actually were. It suited the mon-keigh well, all ruff and sharp, without sense of beauty or continuity. Just blunt, angular, and terminally short. Like their lives. A flickering source of illumination cast the room in shadow, only lighting his seat, a futile attempt to make him fear the dark. The pathfinder had not come to criticize their architecture. He had come to warn them. Though he doubted their simple minds would perceive it as such, he had to try. The mon-keigh didn't trust him, but hadn't expected them to. It explained why his hands and ankles were shackled and bound to a crude metal table, which in turned was bolted to the concrete floor, and left alone in an empty room whose only exit was blocked by a thick armored door with hidden hinges. It was probably locked too, the amount of precautions was either very flattering or simply very redundant. It was just like the mon-keigh to do something over and over again, instead of simply doing it right once.

The heavy steel door opened and a man in a military uniform stalked in, accompanied by another in a long black storm coat. Elamnyl knew everything he needed from the soldier's awkward camouflage-pattern and the many crude stripes on his shoulder. The second was one of the madmen the pathfinder had seen on a field of battle long ago. They were fierce killers who laid their enemies low in great swaths. They also did the same to their allies whenever they failed to live up to the insane creed many of the mon-keigh embraced. One of his visitors was a killer, and the other was a murderer. In this instance, it was hard to tell which was which. The uniformed man sneered angrily, the mangled mess of scars on his face pulling his lips into a threatening rictus. The mon-keigh was muscular and lean, bristling with hatred and disgust at the mere sight of Elamnyl. The other hid his contempt better, an impassive face letting slip none of its revulsion. Except for his eyes, those were alight with righteous fury.

Surprisingly, it was the soldier which spoke to the pathfinder first. The black cloaked man simply stood in the room's corner, one hand grasping the wrist of the other. An oversized pistol was held loosely in his hand, a not so subtle reminder of Elamnyl's future. Strangely angry, these creatures were.

"What are you playing at xeno?" Siggurd leaned in menacingly, hands on the table. "You come here unarmed and expect us to believe you mean us no harm? Do you think it takes so little to convince us? To make us believe you have information that would help us?"

"I have not truly been allowed to speak human, I-" the sound of a hammer being cocked silenced the pathfinder. It seemed he had spoken out of turn. He wondered if the leather clad man would threaten him with death every time he displeased his hosts. Elamnyl decided to be silent instead, and let the mon-keigh play out their ritual.

"Forget your message, and your heresies. You will answer only what I ask. No more. If you do not understand this then I will simply leave and my friend here will send you to your heathen gods. Understood?" the scarred man took a step back, his bulging eyes and slab like teeth retreating with him into the near darkness. The man was undoubtedly a fierce specimen of his warrior kind, but his allure was lost on the century old Eldar, who had seen horrors much more convincing that the one the mon-keigh pretended to be. Elamnyl nodded, his long hair swaying with the gesture.

"Give me your name, your rank, and the details of your mission before you were apprehended." The hardened soldier adopted a pose much like his friend, albeit without a weapon. Elamnyl supposed it was meant to project strength and menace. He stilled a smirk. To the Eldar's sharp senses, the two looked like caged animals, flexing their muscles and baring their chest in an attempt to establish dominance. Nonetheless, they would savage him in a blink of an eye if he gave them reason to.

"I am Elamnyl, outcast of my people and finders of paths, son of Biel-Tan, and I have come to warn you of the creatures you hunt."

"You trying to tell me you're alone out there? The last time Biel-Tan came they had quite the mob with them. Or is it that you're a scout? Is that what a finder of paths is? You here to tell them where to strike when they come for the kill?" Siggurd had not been present for the assault of the Eldar on the Lucius Dynasty outpost, but he had heard of the massacre. Any human death and the hand of the alien was an unforgivable affront, one he burned to redress.

"Yes, I am a scout of sort. I seek out the enemies of Biel-Tan and call the storm down upon those who deserve to die. But that is not why I am here." The bound Eldar shuddered, a sinuous motion. He was working the aches out his body. Elamnyl had long been uncomfortable and rued the fact he could not limber his limbs, few thing were as displeasing to a pathfinder as fetters. The black clad man with the peaked cap made a sound of displeasured."

"You will answer my questions and nothing else xeno." The soldier pointed to his watchdog. "He will not allow your filth to pollute my mind. He will kill you before you are allowed to corrupt a loyal servant of the Emperor. So keep it short, the less you say the better."

Elamnyl had seen the black clad warrior priest of the mon-keigh in action before. He knew the soldier had not lied, he also knew the soldier had left a valuable part out of his threat. The man with the pistol would kill the soldier as well, if he felt the mood take him. It was amusing to consider that there were two prisoners within the small room. One had chains and the other did not but both had come of their own free will. Elamnyl nodded his understanding to the soldier.

The soldier nodded back, "what is your mission?"

"I have hunted the greenskin for many months now, the one which fathered the horde you set yourself against. I wish to slay him, and all his kind."

"So why come here? You throne well know we have no love for your kind." The soldier clenched his fist, cartilage cracking. Elamnyl would need to speak a language the war dogs understood, otherwise his gambit would fail and his mission with it.

"Duty."

The man in black scoffed and spat on the floor. "Your treacherous kind knows no honor, no duty, only the indulgences of your filthy xeno urges."

The scarred soldier squared his shoulders at the sound of his superior barking out. "You heard the man, no honor, no duty. Try again. Why did you come here?"

"Revenge."

The man with the oversized gun nodded to himself, satisfied that Elamnyl fit his mold, while the other was simply content with following the trail his questions exposed.

"You want to kill the men here, don't you? Is that it xeno? You want revenge for your brothers and sisters who died attacking the innocent settlers, is that what makes you wet between the legs?"

Elamnyl tilted his head to get a better look at the soldier's face. Did he honestly believe his own dribble? And why was he mistaking Elamnyl for a woman? By Isha, these beast were stupid things.

"Against the greenskin, human." The soldiers looked to his master, clearly rejecting the answer Elamnyl had given him. The man in black's features, which had grown hot with hateful anger suddenly cooled. A small twinkling light by the man's ear caught the pathfinder's eye then, and he understood. Elamnyl had blamed the claustrophobic chamber and the mistreatment he had suffered at the humans' hands for the pressure in his head. He had even ignored it because its unpleasantness had been only that, unpleasant. But the Eldar knew better now, the sensation he had noticed had been that of an oafish mon-keigh seer peering into his mind. They were reading his thoughts to test his sincerity. Was this what passed for cunning amongst them?

"Go on." The shadowy commissar said.

"Your kind brought him onto this world. He was slain by us. We would have scoured the entire outpost but for the treat of your guns, far above us in the sky. The spores would have been uprooted and the soil cleansed. But he wasn't dead. By the time we returned to purify the sacred grounds he had risen from his grave and disappeared." Elamnyl kept his eyes downcast, away from the violent mon-keigh. He recalled the search with vivid detail, telling them the truth of their folly and the result of their sins. "I tracked him, the beast. It is no chore to do so usually. His kind leave swaths of destruction behind them, but he was different."

The mon-keigh listened to the Eldar's singsong voice, unsettled by its inhuman timber. "It had grew clever for its time with you humans. It hid its trail and often doubled back. It fed on anything it could find, but it never lit a fire. It returned to the outpost to salvage what it needed. It was cleaver, but not more than I was, or so I thought. Its trail was familiar to me and I followed its erratic circles. It always returned to the outpost to pilfer more of what it wanted. So I waited for it in the ruins of your buildings and when it came back, I put a bolt of light through its skull."

The gun totting bigot was casting Elamnyl vicious glances, forced to listen to the xeno tell its tale. The voices in his ear told him to allow the blasphemy to persist. Every moment the executioner's finger strayed from the trigger was another he hated with spiteful scorn. But he obeyed his orders and Elamnyl was allowed to continue.

"Orks are sturdy, paradoxical things. They keep breathing even when dead, and can live without breathing. The only sure way to kill an ork is to burn him, or shred him on a molecular level. So I came to confirm my kill and dispose of the body. I… have not trusted my aim these last few months. The creature had played a childish trick on me, but it had worked. When I came within striking range, readying myself to take its head, it roared back to life and dealt me a grievous blow." The gash across Elamnyl's midriff ached with the sympathetic memory of its birth.

The soldier was frowning. "Yet you survived, for here you are."

Elamnyl nodded, the soft fabrics of his clothes rustling. "Yet I survived. The beast cackled and went on its way. I do not know how long I laid upon the ground, but it was long enough for it to retrieve its clanking monstrosity and load it up with pillage." The pathfinder hesitated to go into the details of his own torturous battle with death, least his thoughts of Uliassen's spirit stone betray him to the mon-keigh. The man in the corner lifted his pistol and aimed it at the Eldar's head. Death and destruction, it was always death and destruction with these creatures.

"The beast must have realized, somewhere along the way, that whenever it was wounded and bled, it left behind spores of itself. The creature had not described lazy circles around the outpost to hide its trail. It knew I would find it. It had sowed its flesh like seeds, and spread its taint. The ork, in a strange irony, had discovered the secret of its own procreation."

"It has not been the first," spat the executioner with his bolt pistol still held firmly in his grip.

The Eldar stared at the mouth of the pistol and leaned to look at its wielder. "No human, it is not the first to do so. War bosses have sent their hordes to die for just the same thing. To breed more warriors, stronger than the last. But this greenskin has enough of a mind to harvest his own flesh. He is methodical, he thinks like you do, at least he tries, and he knows he is vulnerable."

"He shall fall nonetheless xeno, none can stand against the Emperor's light, his hammer and his anvil! Your attempts to demoralize us has failed, now prepare to die!" the commissar stepped forward pressing the muzzle of his gun against the Eldar's head. Siggurd turned his face away, anticipating the splatter.

"My warning is tenfold worst!" The calm of the Eldar was shattered, moments away from an ignoble death. Fear crept into his voice, and the fear made the shadow of death smile. Before the commissar could eliminate the moral threat, his ear bead chimed. Its effect was akin to a chain being yanked. The fervent war dog lifted his aim and stepped back, visibly strained by the effort required to let the Eldar breathe another moment. "Speak, and be warned, your death is assured xeno scum, this is only a reprieve."

Elamnyl sucked the gritty air of the room into his lungs, glad for even that. The mangled faced soldier seemed genuinely surprised to find the pathfinder still alive.

"He's built some kind of machine in the mountain depths, a sort of incubator. From the hundred he has grown from his flesh, he will make thousands, and from them, millions. Or at least he will try until his mind is engulfed by the orkish gestalt and his human born cleverness becomes lost in the tides of his bloodlust."

"And you can lead us to it, is that it?" offered the soldier.

"Yes human, I can. Without me the green tide will swallow you all, but without you it will swallow my people's world. This is why I have come here. This is why I speak the truth, and why it was worth your wrath to do so. For without each other we are doomed"

The commissar flicked the safety on his pistol and holstered it. The soldier, now assured of his superior's satisfaction, pulled a canteen of water from his combat harness and slammed it down in front of the Eldar, leaning the lacerated furrows of his face uncomfortably close to Elamnyl's.

"First things first xeno. It ain't your people's world no more."

-/-/-/-/-

Sigismund was dissecting his thick grox steak with his cutlery. He had been a sorry mess little more than a day ago but now, clad in an administratum adept's tunic and clean shaven, he was heartily swallowing his food with what bordered on ill manners. Sola's story had moved something deep within him, such that he had reached an epiphany. When in turned he had told the vice factotum the truth of his lineage, the matter had resolved itself. He was not a scion, an heir, or a servant of the Dynasty. He was Sigismund, Sieglinde and Hubert's son, and he would do right by them. People depended on him, not things, not mountains of gelts, or age old contracts. No, only people who trusted him to get them through the long night. People like Sola and his crew. He might not be master of the _Semper Fidelis_ anymore, but his duty to the crew remained the same.

"Are you sure you should be eating so much?" asked Sola. The two were in a fine eatery in New Pariden. Large windows bathe the dining hall in soft light as outside, the busy colonists hurried about the city's center. Sola had insisted they go where the Dynasty's eyes and hears would have trouble spying on them, and where they could assemble a team of loyal men and women for the task ahead. Sigs had not only agreed, but he had drawn up an unusual list during their travel planet side. Using the scroll his father had left for him when he exited the Romani bath, which he insisted boiled down to "don't gakk this up," Sigismund had detailed the people and the roles they would play in their clandestine undertaking. People skillful enough to serve a purpose but unimportant enough to be noticed once they went missing from the Dynasty's holdings. With Sola's help, most of the team was already on Ultra Primaris carrying out orders so mundane they suspected nothing, least of all their upcoming recruitment.

Sigismund chewed a mouthful of savory meat and washed it down with a soft honey hued drink, tiny sparkling flecks of gold suspended in its body. "Hair of the beast my dear." Sola stifled a laugh. "What about her, are you sure she should be here?"

Chastity, in her modest attire, could easily pass off as the couple's daughter. Without her power armor and bolter, the young girl's appearance was infinitely more malleable. She kept her gaze fixed on the napkin she was fiddling with while Sigismund scrutinized her.

"Yes, I am. And I was unaware your trampled liver had fallen prey to a grox stampede." She smiled.

"There seems to be little you are unaware of these days Sola. You would make a fine Master of Whispers for the _Semper Fidelis_, had the post not already been filled." Sigs brushed aside his billowing sleeve and returned to battling the thick cut of meat with his knife and fork.

"There is no Masters of Whispers aboard the ship, I made sure of it." Indeed, she had. Before launching herself into her shadowy plan, Sola has scoured the personnel files and a great deal of other more secret documents. Her analytical prowess had all but ruled out the existence of a spymaster aboard the warship. Sigismund only smirked and gave her a wink. It was hard to tell if he was simply mocking her, but the thought that an agent could have evaded her notice sent a shiver down her spine. It would have undermined her greatly if she had slipped up, casting doubt on many another move she had made in accordance with her presumption.

Chastity had ordered no food or drink, and sulked silently. The young girl didn't know why she was here, with the people she had involuntarily dishonored, but Sola had insisted. Her mistress had insisted on a great many things these last few weeks. Strange exercise regiments, familiarization with the Omnissiah's machine rites, even dancing lessons. Of all the mysteries these activities portended, the only thing Chastity knew for sure was that she hadn't seen her wargear in ages. Perhaps she had lost the privilege of bearing arms in the mistress' company.

"There he is," Sola said changing the subject. Sigismund looked up from his plate long enough to witness the appearance of Barr, whose inconspicuous civilian attire made him all but unremarkable, if not for the ocular implant which replaced the eye he had lost to the Eldar. Barr had been ordered to make planet fall with the last remaining storm troopers, a paltry handful, and directed to shadow and observe Sola. She had hope to assess the troopers' abilities beyond shooting and stabbing things. To her surprise, the trio of soldiers had all but evaded her notice, if not for the swarm of minuscule spy drones she had deployed. The skittering machine insects were tucked into window sills and ceiling rafters. One of the men was sitting outside the dining hall, enjoying a recaf with a woman he had picked up moments before. Another was slurping at a lentil soup three tables away.

The trooper pulled a chair by the ravenous Sigismund and scowled, as much as his injured face could. "What's the meaning of all this?"

Sigismund shrugged as he went on chewing. Sola filled the dead air with a smile "You were given orders, the latest of which was to make contact. Or am I wrong?"

The ocular lens whirred as Barr focused his frustrated sight on the vice factotum, who wore non-descript clothing along with the scion and the virgin guard. "In my experience _scribe_, you don't ever make contact with your target during an assa…assignment. And your target certainly don't know what your orders are, either. Not unless you bundled it all up and I know for a fact we didn't."

Sigismund perked up. "You were trained for cleaning missions? Is that standard schola progenium curriculum?" The scion looked more curious than concerned.

"Many boys are given to the inquisition, though the drill abbots call it special operations back at the progenium. Those singled out are given the basics, not all are chosen." Barr didn't expand on his explanation, much to Sigismund's disappointment, and left it at that.

"Well, you're about to embark on a special operation then, you and your boys. Off the record and without Dynastic authority. But it's for a good cause," Sola made the offer but Barr was not convinced. The storm trooper seemed to maul it over as he stared at Sigismund finishing yet another glass of his liquor. The man leaned back in his chair, positively stuffed.

"I'm not fighting for this prick. I won't endanger what's left of my brothers unless I get a direct order from the command echelon. Which I heard he's no longer part. Enough good, loyal blood has been spilled for greedy gakkers and their ivory towers." Barr was gesturing at the establishment they were in, and Sola suspected everything beyond its walls. It was true the world was being colonized for profit, but it served the Imperium's aim nonetheless.

"We believe," began Sola. She shared a glance with Sigismund and he nodded. "That the Eldar are plotting to wipe the entire population of Ultra Primaris. We don't expect just another assault. If that's the way they were going, it would have happened already." Chastity looked up from her sulking, realizing that she was privy to something of dire importance. In no uncertain terms, by speaking of the matter in her presence, the mistress was extending her trust again and giving her an opportunity to redeem herself. "We need to uncover their plans and stop them however we can, but the Dynasty won't give the word. It would sow panic and their investments would falter. That's why we have the Lord Dynast's unspoken blessing and nothing else."

Barr growled, helping himself to a glass which had been poured for him by a passing waiter. "What, just the four of us?"

Sola smiled again. "Us four, your back up over there, a navigator, a mechanicus adept, a bounty hunter, and a pilot." Barr followed Sola's nod to see his men clinging to covers which obviously had been blown. The sergeant pressed something hidden within his sleeve and the troopers dispersed as inconspicuously as they could. The soup slurper left a few gelts on his table and made his way to the exit, while the lady killer outside abandoned his girl with her recaf in hand. That one clearly wondered what she did wrong. "Sigismund also believes he can convince the Imperial Guard commander on the planet to help us, so it's not entirely on us."

Barr chewed his tongue and took another gulp of his drink. Sigismund patted his stomach and smirked confidently. "An eye for an eye, Barr. Just like the ancient Terrans of old."

Barr's augmented eye whirred noisily as he stifled a sneer. "Fine, I'm in."

"And me?" asked the virgin guard, ramrod straight at the edge of her seat.

Sola signaled the maître d'hôtel. A slew of waiters cleaned their table in a fanciful flourish, leaving only a discreet bill by Sola's hand. "I have plans for you… special plans."

Chastity smiled brightly, with all the naiveté of youth.

-/-/-/-/-

It was no small feat to stay informed on the flotilla. Between the Dynasty's ships, there was close to a hundred thousand servants. It was like keeping an eye on a small city, which was divided in three parts, and separated by the cold empty sea of the void. Of all those servants only a few thousand actually mattered, which simplified the task immensely. Those were the ship officers and the petty officers which answered to them. From the Lord Captain's own masters of the bridge to the clerics and confessors, tech-adepts and lay artisan, gun captains and whips, all were but a handful of the teeming hordes which served at the Dynasty's pleasure. The daunting task was made manageable by this fact, a fact which unfortunately no longer applied. The colonization of Ultra Primaris had brought nearly three times the Dynasty's numbers within its orbit; the crews of the _Bull, Valhalla, _and the _Stalker_ being the most prominent of the contracted aid required for such an endeavor. Finally, the planet itself, now populated by a few millions, was a hotbed on contentious interest from all those powerful- and dangerous- enough to afford it.

But Lucretia knew one thing all those busy lords and ladies did not. She knew her brother's mind. As the captain navigated the treacherous corridors of the _Chariot_, evading the dead ends, the pitfalls, the crushing walls, holofields, and the motion triggered murder servitors, she finally arrived at the heart of the fat bellied transport. Scroll in hand, she approached the Virgin Guard which stood before the vast tempered vault door, gilded with precious metal and glimmering gems. "I have news for her grace, let me in." Blank helm visors stared back at her, the soft hum of their power armor a subtle reminder of their murderous potential. After nearly a minute of silence, the guards parted and the vault opened behind them. Normally such lack of decorum would have been a death sentence for those foolish enough to disrespect a ship's master, but the painful truth was that Lucretia was not the true master of the _Chariot_. Zenobia, fair matriarch of the Dynasty, was mistress above all others here, and Lucretia but a glorified coach driver.

The captain slipped beyond the thick armored vault and suddenly found herself in another world. Gone were the dark and empty corridors, their warmthless plasteel edges sullen and ominous. Lucretia now stood under a clear blue sky with soft cheerful clouds. Her booted feet now threaded grass, dirt, and sand. The air was fragrant and alive with scents the likes of which should never truly bless a void born ship. Lucretia approached the squat villa by the artificial sea, Virgin Guards with cloaks of silk or animal pelts, draped over their ceramite shoulder, watched her every move. From a distance; on the hills; by the roads; under trees; or atop actual living horses. They almost looked like naked warrior maidens, thanks to their armor. Like legends, their skins were fair or lightly tanned, their firm yet supple breasts were carried on proud chests, their nubile bodies sculpted to perfection. Two things dispelled the illusion however, their helmed faceplates and their large godwyn-pattern boltguns. There were no spears or leather skinned shields for these warriors, only ceramite forged into a façade of flesh and the promise of a bloody death for those who threatened their mistress.

The captain walked up the granite steps of the villa and entered without fear. Her breeding robbed her long ago of undignified expressions such as fear, and her confidence assured her safety. The Lady Dynast was wrapped in pristine white robes, their edges trimmed with Ultramar's blue, and the fabric held in place by a golden lion brooch at her shoulder. An elderly lady now, her beauty still shone, her long slender neck holding up a nest of braided and oiled hair, which rose like the crown she never wore. In truth, Lucretia and Zenobia could have been sisters, both wore their eight decades with pride and wisdom, but the captain remained youthful and fresh because it served the Dynasty. Zenobia on the other hand, had long passed the day she could bear children for the Lord Dynast, and so had been left to wither and die according to natures whims. It was a cruel fate, and one Lucretia despised. Women were used and cast off for the sake of their noble born masters, or in the case of the captain, denied their true heritage and rights because of tradition and gender.

The two women embraced in the usual greeting, though none felt relieved for it. "My ability to keep tabs on the affairs of the Dynasty has somewhat been lessened due to the nature of our present predicament. Yet for all that, I have kept my best and most trustworthy eyes on my brother." Lucretia handed the Lady Dynast the scroll she held. Zenobia seemed intrigued but passed the soft velum to her hand maiden, who immediately unfurled the message and read it out loud.

"The cub has risen from his slumber" said the youthful maiden. "Convinced by his merchant queen and blessed by the sun itself, he sets his paws upon his new domain and gathers a pride to his side." The handmaiden was justifiably confused, but kept reading on. "With spears, hound, eyes, and iron body, he visits generals in their home. There is no rhyme or reason, yet the cub prepares to roar."

Zenobia smiled softly and caressed the young girl's head of hair, dismissing her. The Lady Dynast and the captain walked the halls of the villa in relative silence until they reached the artificial sea. The water roared and rushed about, splashing against the villa's stones villa which met at its shore and sprayed salt into the air. Truly, the illusion of life was artfully constructed. Lucretia knew the truth however, that the millions of gallons of water which were pumped and salted by the tech-adepts was just one of the many extravagances which decorated the Lady Dynast's cage.

"Your spies are wise to speak in riddles, but I would rather know the whole of it and your intentions with this visit." Said the graceful matriarch.

Lucretia pulled her cloak about her, saving herself from the worst of the occasional spray. She, like most of the Dynasty, had been born far from natural weather, and the simulacrum bothered her. "My brother was good and done for before his clever bitch dragged him out of his stupor. Whatever is going on with him, it's her doing and her plan, and a plan involving a scion is a plan against the Dynasty."

"I would agree. Only I do not understand why you continue to oppose your brother. Sigismund has lost his command, and his veneer of invincibility, you have succeeded. The foolishness of men has been made clear and the daughters of the Dynasty are now in command of its ships."

Lucretia turned her gaze upon the floor, not in submission but in respect. "The senatorum has a short memory, like the senile old men they are, if Sigismund achieves some kind of heroic feat they will rally to his side again."

Zenobia sighed thoughtfully. She raised Lucretia's chin to meet her eyes and nodded her understanding. "We are close you and I, closer than we were before. You have helped my daughter command her own fate and I understand too well how fickle men's heart can be." The Lady Dynast stroked her stomach softly. "I have already sacrificed one of my guards for you, what else do you need?"

"My agents have told me that Sigismund and Sola, his vice factotum, spoke briefly in the private baths of my father. They tell me that when they met, it was in hushed whispers, the kind with which secrets are shared. My agents could not overhear, yet we need to know what was said. It might be the secret to his recovery. When men and women share naked baths, they either scream in pleasure or plot in whispers."

Zenobia was only too familiar with the saying, having done both herself in her youth. It was often quoted to justify final solutions. Lucretia's lips were still but her eyes begged the question. Did she seek the Lady Dynast's permission to kill her brother? Was fratricide so easily considered? Zenobia prayed Sigismund's secret would be enough to save his life and ruin his claim to the charter of trade. She was convince Lucretia would kill him otherwise. "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorn. A skald once said so, in times lost on Terra. I pray you do not burn in the fire you unleash. I will help you as I can."

Lucretia bowed and walked away before being dismissed. There would be no hiding from her just cause. She would rip the bowels of the _Semper Fidelis_ if it came to it. She would find what that ambitious little whore had in store for her brother. What's more, she knew exactly who could help her do it. With her mother and sister urging her, Evangeline would believe anything they chose to tell her. That her brother was a traitor turned by a cut throat opportunist and trying to plot against their father, was the easiest lie of all. It was the easiest because it was so plausible, that it was only a matter of time before it became the truth.


	11. Chapter 11

_**Into the Breach:**_

_**Part 11**_

The grot was running through the tunnels of the mountain. It was on a mission and it needed to report to the boss that the humies were riding closer to the fort. It slipped between the legs of its larger cousins, dodging their kicks and the occasionally thrown rock. One such projectile smashed against the wall next to the grot's head. He hopped over some looted crates and into the western tunnels before anymore found their mark. Hiding behind one of the support pillars that braced the rough-hewn corridors of the mountain, the grot looked back to find the offender. Ruff-Rida was it? The grot would remember that one.

The diminutive greenskin set off again in a hurried pace. He steered clear of the squig pens and the runt herdz. Those buggers wouldn't care if he was the boss' favorite, they'd chomp him up in no time flat just because they could. He ran across a mob of his kind, they were banging nails into the wooden struts that held up the cave work. They hissed hatefully and flung handful of the sharp nails his way. The grot didn't care. They were just jealous. He hopped and skipped his way through the field of caltrops on his way to the hot place. The chamber was a large pit, strung with pulley ropes, tackles and blocks. Large orks heaved large crudely forged containers. They were filled with dirt, grimy water, and ork bits. The latter were from the boys who lost fights. Those were the Boss' rulz. He flung himself at a rope and rode the chaffing lengths of it to the lower levels. The grot screeched madly as the rope burned his spindly fingers, eventually letting go and crashing into the stone ledge of the level he had wanted to get at. Below him, a few more of the cast iron incubators were lined around the pit. Red bubbling hot stuff roiled down below the pit. It was all part of the master plan. The boss had made the incubators and then passed on his plans to Sizzle Guts, the only mek boy other than the boss.

It was the very same ork which looked at him now, sprawled on the stony cliff's edge, and scratching at the surface for purchase. The oddboy was grinning, all toothy tusk, and watching the grot scramble for his life. He looked disappointed when the grot managed to climb to safety, his beady eyes dimming as he huffed at the grot's sudden victory over death. Right then was the wrong time to bother the mek boy, but an unfortunate grot helper had just fetched a spanner and seemed in a hurry to hand it over. Sizzle Guts finally took notice of his grot assistant, who proffered the tool he had been sent to fetch with a mixture of fear and excitement, and yanked the tool out of the small greenskin's clawed hands. The assistant was thrown bodily into the air and fell over the edge. Sizzle Guts didn't even notice as it hurled bloody curses at him before disappearing into the lava at the bottom of the pit.

The boss' favorite grot watched it all happen, pointy ears flopping somewhat dejectedly, before sprinting away from the grumpy mek boy. First rule of survival: make yourself small and get out of the way. Second rule of survival: make yourself useful to the biggest, meanest ork around. The third rule: eat everything you can get your claws on. So far today the grot had manage the first two. The grot finally made it to where all the wheelz were kept. He scampered onto one war trukk then another before spotting the boss. The large nob was putting the torch to his ride - the biggest, most bestest orky tank around - welding more spikey bits to its already enormously armored frame. The boss himself was almost as armored as his rig, with his mega armor splashed in red and yellow, the evilz sunz colors, all across his barrel chest and steel gob.

"Oie, boss!" screamed the grot, trying to drown out the make shift hangar's rumble. Every available inch of the cave was filled with speek freaks 'fixing' their buggies, bikes, and trukks, or adding more dakka. It was hard for the grot to get his nasally, screeching voice high enough. The grot started to climb the boss' rig to get closer, but he made sure to stay out of arm's reach. The boss flipped back his crude welding mask with a hefty nod of his head and then reached to his belt where a still squirming squig was awaiting the pleasure of another bite. The tiny chompy ball of flesh snapped viciously at anything it could get its teeth in. It got a mouth full of orky power armor and broke a fang while Knuckles took another large bite out of its flank and tied the creature to his belt once again. It squealed and strained against its fate until its upside down gaze met that of the climbing grot. They both eyed each other suspiciously and after a moment the squig threw itself into another tirade of pointless aggression.

"Boss!" The grot stomped on the rig's cab, but knuckles ignored him. He continued to bounce about and flail his arms but to no avail. Finally, the grot kicked one of the blackened exhaust stacks in frustration. By the time it stopped dancing about cradling its injured foot, Knuckles' bulging eyes were upon it.

"Ugh, oh, boss! I gots a message for ya. Sorry bout da pipes boss, din't mean to I swearz!" the small greenskin was on his toes, looking for the closest means of escape, its small eyes darting to and fro incase Knuckles took offense at the kick. The boss only rumbled and gave the little grot the stink eye.

"Git' on with it Nails. Can't ya seez im working 'ere!" Even standing on top of the rig, Nails was painfully aware that Knuckles could just reach up and snatch the little grot if he wanted to. Knuckles' time away from the humans had been good to him. He had grown, and he had shed, and now he was boss of his own clan. All he was missing was a big hat.

Nails bobbed his head in agreement, his pointy ears straightening out. "Roadkillz was on da noise box, boss. He sayz dem humie be riding 'ere. He sayz… he sayz dem broke all yer'z talky towers south of da river, boss!" Nails was wary of giving bad news. Knuckles' temper had been flaring these last few weeks. He was talking more orky like, spending less time explaining things and punctuating all proper like with his fists. Anyhows, he was getting easier to understand but a lot more dangerous to be around.

"How manyz?" grunted the armored nob. The metal chassis he had built for himself crackled from loosely connected power couplets. They spat fat sparks whenever Knuckles' got angry. Knuckles dropped the torch he had been using and pulled the snack from his belt. His massive tusked maw closed around its neck less head head. The flesh parted and bones crunched as the squig squawked like a mating parrot. The boss threw the leftovers over his shoulder and a swarm of gretchin started a fist fight over them. Nails licked his thin green lips, chapped as they were, and eyed the food with soulful yearning before returning his attention to Knuckles.

"Roadkillz say dem humies gots Skullcrusher and Gargalagak's hideouts and all the loots da boys got from' em settlers. It's all lost boss! Allllllllllll of it!" Knuckles roared and scooped the torch canister off the floor to throw at Nails' head, which the grot dodged by going to ground on the cab's roof. Behind the angry boss, the gretchin participating in the battle of squig's leg paused for a few heart beats, eyes and ears twisting about to assess the danger before returning to their emaciated scuffle.

"How manyz do I haz to crush, ya grot! Answer me wen' I talks to yaz!" an iron clad claw sparked into life as Knuckles pointed it at Nails. The power field sputtered into lifelessness, but only after the boss took a moment to breathe.

Nails got himself up into a crouch, ready for evasive maneuvers. "Lotz boss. Dem humies gotz all sortsa wheelz. Big'uns and small uns but all are 'ard boss! Lotz like… like…" The grot looked around the cave turned motor pool for inspiration. He tried consulted his fingers, but quickly gave up. "Lotz!"

Knuckles stomped to the rig's side hatch and pulled it open, it shrieked of unoiled metal. "Dun matter! Git da trukks and loadz'em with da boyz." Nails nodded attentively. "Get'em Sluggas, dem chompas, dem tank bustas, an all da speed freaks!" Nails nodded some more. "Tell Sizzle Guts ta keep da incubators going." More nodding.

Knuckles made to get inside his rig than popped his head out again to look at Nails, who nodded again instinctively for no apparent reason. Knuckles furrowed his brow in momentary confusion. "And tell da herdz to git dem gretchin on' da fort's gunz! If da humies send dem fighta-bombaz I want' em shotz outta da skyz!" It seem too much for the grot to remember but he bobbed his head again, with any luck Knuckles would also have forgotten most of his orders by the time the fight had started.

With the satisfying sound of his rig's power plant roaring into life, Knuckles pulled the air horn and blasted a hearty cord. The surrounding orks' hearing suddenly filled with ringing ahmmers. The boyz howlered and hooted in excitement, a few wondering why they couldn't hear themselves, and the clan started to mount their wheelz. The riders would roll out of the mountain, traveling through the winding tunnels and picking up orks as they went. From atop Knuckles' rig, Nails screeched out the boss' instruction. He could have screamed his little lungs out and it wouldn't have made a difference. The mental drums of the waaagh had begun to beat, and instinct stirred within the meaty breast of every ork in the mountain. Cries echoed in the mountains; of dakka dakka dakka; of red'uns go fasta; of stab'em, stomp'em, shoot'em; and of course, of Waaagh!

-/-/-

The last forty-eight hours had been decisive for the Guard. The 2nd's lightfoots had spread across the plains and hills of the northern shelf identifying frontiersmen and their outpost. Combined with the eyes in the sky, ork targets were divined and isolated. The initial plan had been to flush out the orks and break them against Imperial armor, but with the intelligence provided by the Eldar, Brigadier-Colonel Trevin had made some small adjustments. To limit the possibility of flanking attacks, the orks would be allowed to attack neighboring outposts to give away their position, then they would be systematically culled. As expected, the orks had played into the Imperial Guard's hands.

Orbital surveyors had picked up the xenos column heading to claim Ygrid-792, a small botanica installation. The fallschirmjagers had plummeted from the sky on plums of fire and smoke, deploying into defensive positions to protect the Emperor's subjects. Enough time had been bought by the drop troopers for the armored fist to arrive. Hussars from the 4th with their Leman Russ variants and Chimeras laden with Persephonian 1st crushed the raiding orks. The enemy had been pursued and their forward base of operations had been destroyed, as well as many of their primitive communication devices.

After torching the enemy assets, thunderbolt fighter's harassed their fleeing columns straight to their primary base of operations. Because the mountain range was so broad, the discovery had been a vital piece of intelligence for the Guard, and as captain Falk's Thunderbolts peeled away from the hidden anti-air batteries, the rest of the Persephonian battle group was already rearming and refueling to press the advantage. It was time to deal the _coups de grace_, time to end this infestation before it grew out of control. With luck, the Imperial forces could contain it and its inevitable resurgences to this small part of the world. Truly eliminating an ork infestation require severe scorch earth protocols. Many worlds simply kept an eye out on the problematic territories and threw thousands of soldiers at them when the threat of a new Waaag crested the horizon. But that kind of after action consideration were out of Brigadier-Colonel Trevin's hands. Instead he focused on what was at hand. Yes, it had been a good forty-eight hours.

The 2nd's light infantry had been taxied to the Ork's mountain, ready to scour its peaks with trained specialists set on destroying the AA guns. With stealth and patience the light infantry slowly infiltrated the enemy grounds ready to engage the orks in a deadly game of cat and mouse. The 3rd and 5th moved up their assets into effective bombardment range and dug their earthworks. The hammer was ready to strike, and the anvil had been placed to receive it. Where the Persephonian advance had been slow and deliberate for most of its battalions, it had been quite another story for the battalions of the 1st and 4th. The orks were never beaten back for very long and their numbers and ramshackle vehicles seemed unending. In truth, the orks were simply resilient and their light armor easily repaired. What would have taken a company out of action for a week simply took a few hours for the orks to deploy on the field once again.

Trevin realized in a strange and ironic twist of fate that the ork's relatively small numbers was both a blessing and a curse. The clan's clever boss kept his boyz into the fight long enough to cause havoc, but pulled them back before too many were killed. Had their numbers been slightly bigger, the ork boss would have never been able to use them so effectively. The result was a series of rapid armor duels and hit-and-run attacks. The mechanized forces had been kept on their toes, rushing to and fro in an effort to keep the orks contained and spare the more vulnerable elements of Trevin's battalions. Now that everything was in place it was time to push the advantage. Trevin was weary from the accumulated fatigue brought on by two long days of constant operations. He and Misfit were still ready to fight, the long sleepless stints in the red wastes of Kusk had toughened them to its effects, but the same could not be said of troops. Additionally, the light foots hadn't blown the AA guns yet, nor any of the artillery embedded in the mountain. A push was ill advised, but so was sitting here and handing over the initiative to the orks.

Trevin scratched at his stubbly chin. Within his command Chimera, Freddy was manning the advance comm station and rattling out battle reports, Jensen and Laura adjusted the tactica display, and Corvin manned the auto cannon turret.

Freddy turned in his seat and flagged Trevin. "Incoming transmission from Major Ghalla, patching through to your headset sir!" The Brigadier-Colonel nodded, cupping a hand over his ear to better hear the major.

"Hussar command to Lord Trevin, these blasted orks are running up a tally!" The major had forgotten himself, addressing Trevin by his title instead of rank. Augustus was relieved the Lord Commissar, who watched the ever changing battle map and the troop disposition with glacial detachment, was not privy to the discussion. "We can't proceed as ordered. Every push by my Vanquisher squadron is met by ork outriders with those ridiculous polearms!" Ghalla had lost much of his earlier assurance, contact with the enemy often did that.

"Then support them, major!" ordered Trevin over the vox. It was true the suicidal bikers were a hassle. They had already immobilized a squadron's worth of vehicles and cowed a company's worth into timid manoeuvers. While the Imperial armor dueled with the ork looted tanks, the riders would blitz into melee range and hop off their bikes. By then it was often too late to stop them from slamming their oversized sledge hammers into the tank's hulls. The hammers by themselves were not the problem, the shaped charges attached to them were. Headless of their own death, the orks detonated the explosives before either hopping onto their bikes again or falling to the ground in pieces. However crude, their tactic was very efficient. Ghalla had to follow up his Vanquisher pattern Leman Russ with infantry to keep the bikes at bay. Unfortunately, the major had overextended his dedicated tank-killers and was now losing the valuable assets.

"Fall back to Sigma-Delta-Prime and regroup with the 1st's Rommer Company before pushing again. No further losses are advisable, major." Trevin concentrated on the battle field again, topographic maps were overlaid by clear plasteek sheets with tactical data. The Lord Commissar leaned in for a quiet word.

"The xenos are baiting us again, trying to draw us into their artillery range." Trevin agreed. Every time the ork force pushed, they retreated to the safety of their artillery over watch moments after. The 5th's guns were a suitable retort, but a Basilisk barrage would be too risky, a stray shot could easily compromise the lightfoots in the hills. The mountain was filled with hidden cannons sheltered behind shutters or rock formations, and only the lightfoots could locate and sabotage them effectively. If only the ork boss could be located and targeted then maybe the insane amount of coordination the orks had displayed would collapse. It would allow Trevin to bleed the ork's numbers and blunt their hit-and-run attacks.

"Where is he, and how is he keeping such a mob so responsive?" Trevin leaned over the table, trying to discern a hidden pattern.

"War bosses lead from the front Brigadier-Colonel," said Lord Commissar Otto. "Weirdboyz tend to lead from the back."

"There is no way we can push to the back of their lines without getting flanked or blown to bits by their artillery. There is nothing we can do until the lightfoots succeed in their objective."

The commissar nodded, his peaked cap dipping. "I concur, the Guard must hold its ground until then. Every life lost buys us the time we need to mount a counter charge."

Trevin hated to agree with Otto's assessment but to charge now would cost them dearly, far better to wait and dig in despite the casualties such an action inevitably carried with it. The Imperial forces had almost a hundred-and-fifty armored vehicles on the field, the orks but a fraction of that, but they lashed out at every advancing units like a madmen fighting off a pack of wolves. They were everywhere and nowhere at once, striking wildly and with abandon, and under the cover of tons of ordinance which denied the Imperial force its own maneuverability.

"Emperor on Terra," cursed Trevin as he received more and more casualty reports. "How is he managing this?"

-/-/-

Knuckles was half out of the driver's side hatch with a pair of orky magnoculars to his face. He guffawed as another shell landed near his outriders, sending the mob in an entirely different direction then it had been heading. He slapped the top of his cab and pointed at the far distance. "Nails, shoot' em again, send em south towards' em other gitz!" Gretchin manned the guns of the chunky battlewagon which festooned the rig's surface. There were gun nests with stubbers and auto cannons as well as heavy flamers. Despite the impressive arrays of dakka, nothing matched the sheer size and power of the krusha kannon Knuckles had welded onto the back of his rig. It had range, it had power, but most of all, it was loud, nice and proper like.

Nails scampered down the massive length of the cannon which he had climbed to see the shell go boom, and jumped into the gunner's seat. Beside him, a grot pulled the level that sent the loading mechanism into gear, launching the empty shell in a gush of released gas and stuffing another one in the breach from the magazine beneath its feet. "Dat was a nice shot, wassun'it boss?" The mek boss waved an iron shod hand, dismissing Nails. He jammed his binoculars to his face again.

A massive series of explosion rippled across the mountain side behind them, only a few kilometers away. The blast wave sent Nails' ears flopping about and most of the gretchin into hiding. The grot looked at the controls of the krusha kannon in confusion, then turned in his bucket seat. He was looking back at the mountain when Knuckles came clambering up the rig's side. The boss bellowed so hard ropes of thick slimy saliva splattered Nail's entire back.

"I ain't told yaz to miss wit da kannon, did iz?" Knuckles was rearing back a meaty arm to slap the grot's head off. Nails cowered in a ball, his arms stretched out in a vain attempt to protect his shivering frame.

"It wazzn't me boss, I swearz, I swearz!" cried the grot. A few more of the gretchin slunk out of their hiding places and were now watching the spectacle at the near distance. The mountain was catching fire, which also drew Knuckles attention mid swing. The nob grimaced as he took in the carnage in the hills.

"W-wut wuz dat?" The enthralled gretchin were beginning to giggle and cackle in instinctive glee, but not Nails. He climbed down the gunner's seat as quietly as he could and tip-toed away. He was not fast enough. Knuckles caught him by the scuff and lifted him to his face, the tiny grot now staring at the metal gob's serrated teeth. "wut did youz do?"

Nails' screwed, impish features fell into ecstatic repose as he tinkled down his loin cloth. The fear had been too much for him. Knuckles ignored the acrid stench, looking down to see if he was finished. Then Nails finally managed to compose himself. "Nuttin'boss. I swearz on me mum. It mussta been da humies."

"Youz dun have a mum, Nails. Iz grew youz from me own bitz, Iz did." Knuckles shook the tiny grot violently but then stopped when a thought crossed his mind. "Dem humies ar'e tricksy tho..." The mek-boss dropped the terrified grot and pointed his metal claws at another. "Call back da boyz, we head'in home!" The greenskin slaves scampered to their appointed task, even those who had none. Knuckles then dropped down from the back of his rig, the ground shaking when his armored boots hit the dirt, and got into the driver's cab. Humies didn't blow stuff up just for the pretty colors and the sounds, Knuckles knew. Without the gunz on the hills or in the mountains, the humies would either blow his boyz up with their supa kannons, or with their fighta-bombers. It was time to take the fight into the caves.

No amount of trickery would help them there. When it came to fighting hand to hand in tight tunnels, that's where his boyz were best. It was a shame they couldn't get stuck in a proper fight with their rides. But maybe there would be time for one last surprise before the brawl. Knuckles grinned, all beady red eyes and yellow tusks.

-/-/-

A stately auto carriage rumbled along the winding road which lead to Lord Trevin's estate. Perfectly groomed trees and hedges lined the road as it ran from the gated entrance to the mansion. Sigismund smirked as he noticed that the long and twisting path was both elegant and practical. The scion, now dressed as a minor noble of some obscure Persephonian house, dared to imagine the Brigadier-General had lain out his front yard with tactical intention. Sight lines were obscured, the plentiful cover could hide numerous ambushers, and the road limited fast deployment and mobility, which when combined with the mansion sitting on the flattened hillock, were all textbook fortification. Of course it was all useless against an actual foe. No shrubbery or chest high walls would stop determined besiegers. But it was a quaint reminder of the military lord's affectations.

Sola reached over from her seat at Sigismund's side and straightened his umber colored sash. She was picky about the details and she insisted they look the part of lord and lady so as to not arouse the suspicion of their yet to manifest foes. The scion took her hand in his and held it firmly to quiet her fidgeting, calming her nerves. Much to her credit, her soft smile did more for Sigismund's mood than he could ever do for hers. The vice factotum was a platinum blond today, with various braided loops complimenting her modest yet flattering short sleeved dress, her burnished gold colors matching her liege lord's sash. The last few days had been a flurry of disguises and back stories which verged on the comical. Sola had demonstrated all the paranoia of a spy master, with the backup plans and escape routes you would expect of one. Sigismund wondered just how exactly she had acquire such a network of assets and properties. Sola's creative accounting could only mean thievery, but it was too soon to tell if this was more than the term 'operational requirements' entailed. He doubted the trail of stolen gelts remained cold, but he trusted Sola's obsessive, manic perfectionist to keep them one step ahead of the Dynasty.

The couple was driven to the lovely front steps of the Trevin estate, the auto carriage's manservant opening the door for them, and invited inside by a majordomo whose critical sense of heraldry was perturbed by the colors and sigil which Sigismund wore. As befit a master of discreet affairs, the man quickly hid his reaction and gallantly escorted the couple to the west side terrace.

The servants which filled the estate were busily moving about in a tireless and seemingly endless attempt to outdo their perfect housekeeping record. Which considering the traditional gothic architecture of imperial structures, was a feat of near supernatural skill. Try as he might, Sigismund had not seen a speck of dust, nor an ill pressed curtain; not on the mahogany glazed furniture, nor the supremely tall fluted columns; not on the delicate crystal ware vases nor the achingly high vaulted ceilings. The hired help was as clinical and precise as storm troopers drilling in the parade grounds on Emperor's feast day. Sigismund reconsidered the floral defenses on his way in, he fancied the groundkeepers might be able to take out a few dozen invaders before anyone made it to the front door.

Sola squinted against the noonday sun as she looked out across the estate's western lands, noticing the equestrian obstacle course laid out and the rider making short work of it. "Lord Trevin is busy with the orks at the moment." Said Sola. "We will no doubt be meeting his fiancée, the Lady Della. She's the one who petitioned your help to retrieve survivors on Kursk."

Sigismund grinned, flashing her a pleasant smile as the soft breeze rustled his chestnut hair. "Lovely lady, I think you'll like her." Sola raised an eye brow, but stuck to the subject she had broached.

"We need to convince her sigs. She is the best link to the Brigadier-Colonel. A missive from her won't rouse suspicion and will allow us to continue gathering our influence unopposed. With Barr and Chastity fetching Devros and Pollux from their assignment planet side, all we will need is for Toth to taxi Remi to the surface and our team will be complete."

"Huh-huh." Sigismund was watching the rider spurring its mount to leap over the obstacle course's outer perimeter and make its way to them. The mount's white pelt glistened with a thin coat of sweat as it pranced closer to the terrace. Sola was urgently trying to finish Sigs' reminder.

"If we don't get her onboard we won't be able to bring enough force to stop the Eldar once we figure out their plan. All this will amount to nothing if we can't secure the Imperial commander's regiments." She clung to the scion's arm as was customary on Persephony, maintaining the illusion that they were nobles from that world. Lady Della would probably see through the subterfuge, as her majordomo surely had, but the new colonists would be none the wiser. All the better for it, as any informant would undoubtedly be placed amongst their numbers.

The rider disembark with practiced ease and walked up the terrace steps. She, for it was clearly Lady Della, took off her black furred hardhat and tucked it under the sleeve of her red riding jacket. The vest hugged her body, the burnished buttons trailing at its center below her bust line. It complimented her white riding trousers, which were tucked into polished knee high leather boots. The lady was stripping her gloves off with imperious ease, folding them, as etiquette required, to hang from her left hand.

Sigs bowed and Sola Curtsied. "Thank you for seeing us on such short notice Lady Della. I hope your betrothed is well and safe at the front?" said Sigismund.

Josephina Della smiled graciously and lifted the hem of an imaginary dress as she curtsied herself, one leg crossed behind the other. She invited the couple to follow her with a wave of her hand. "If he is safe then he is not leading from the front." The lady laughed softly, but there was iron in her smile. "I assure you he is in the thick of it, he would not be the man I love otherwise."

The couple followed her through large doors, each small pane perfect in their symmetry, and accompanied her down the carpeted halls of her home. "I am deeply grieved by the state of affairs and I hope our late attention to the matter had not cost too many lives," said Sola. "Bureaucracies can sometimes be slow but no Imperial organization is free of such a necessary evil."

Della opened the doors of her private study, her fiancée's own sharing the eastern wall and the portal between them. Great arched windows filled the room with golden light and the walls were filled from floor to ceiling with books, so many in fact a gantry had been built to reach the upper volumes. Though Della's role as a wife was traditionally subservient to her lord husband, Augustus and Josephina were not a traditional couple. Trevin had insisted she have an equal hand in all matters of their estate, and she would have accepted nothing less. They were partners in life, love, house, and war; one always counseling the other.

The lady sat behind her large desk and the couple took the seats which were offered at her insistence. Not a word had been exchanged since breaching the doors of the sanctum and their subsequent sealing. The three inhabitants eyed one another, unsure as to the silence Della obviously forced with her behavior.

"We will dispense with the pleasantries, the politics, and the sycophantry. I was raised as a high born lady, trained as an officer of his Majesty's most holy Imperial Guard, and I am soon to be wife to the man you manoeuver to recruit in your power play. The man you returned to me, and for which I am eternally grateful. Or am I wrong in that?"

The scion laughed at the brazen nature of his host. Sola seemed a bit more worried by the frank talk, weighting the security of their surroundings against electronic eaves-dropping. Sigismund turned to his companion and smiled. "I told you she was a lovely lady."

Della nodded and accepted the compliment while Sola's frustration colored her soft features with a rosy shade. "I assure you, vice factotum Villaneuva, in these quarters are shared the most sensitive of matters. Matters pertaining to imperial deployments and war strategies. You are safe from your enemies' eyes and ears here."

"Thank you my lady but I'd rather make my own assurances," Sola countered. "You are, however, not wrong. Enemies prowl in the shadows of this world and are set to strike against the Imperium we are all sworn to protect." Sola produced a discreet data storage device, which she handed to Lady Della. "Please review this, in silence if possible. You will have to forgive me if I refrain from taking unnecessary risks."

Della took the small device and activated it. Micro holo technologies flared to luminescent life and projected the information within. Text and picts filled the air with reams of data crunching projections making Sola's case for herself. It pointed to all the inconsistencies in xenos behavior and the relevant information which suggested the Eldar were not defeated but rather waiting in wait to strike a death blow to Ultra Primaris. One which would wipe out the entire population of the world and deal a massive blow to the dynasty and its investors' capital. The kind of blow Imperial interests would most likely never recover from in this section of the expanse. The Eldar were masterful users of force multipliers, using their limited numbers in ways which cause harm far beyond their expected capabilities. The scenario painted here was well within their capacity to enact. The evidence was compelling, to say the least.

Sigismund was snapped out of his reveries when Della finally spoke. He abandoned his quest to count the spines of the books on the surrounding shelves. "Though your report is impeccably assembled, better than most munitorum assessments I have ever had the pleasure of reviewing, your conclusion is mostly a projection of possible scenarios. On the other hand, we have a very real and actual problem regarding the orks."

Sola loaned closer to the desk. "Using tried and tested prophesy algorithms consecrated by the Omnissiah, I have deduced the Eldar to be the greater threat." She dared Della to argue the truth of the Machine God's might. Old habits died last. Sigismund could see Della squaring up for the argument. He had often dealt with these kinds of women during his career. They were fierce and stubborn. He was luckily very skilled at placating them, the feisty ones especially. He raised his hands to petition for calm.

"I am sure the question of the ork infestation is what presses most at Lady Della's keen tactical mind. Without dealing with the threat they pose, there will be no time to thwart the Eldar's plot. But without the foresight to use every tool at our disposal, we will only be exchanging victory for defeat. We need both immediate and long term strategies. No war nor problem was ever solved without both." Sigismund gave each of the ladies a nod and held their gaze. These women were too smart to fall for simple flattery, but both were keen enough to realize the truth. They would succeed more assuredly together then alone, and Sigismund needed them both. It was only a matter of convincing them that they also needed each other. A good captain showed the way and left his crew do what they did best.

"I can agree with that." Said Della.

"I as well," added Sola.

"Perhaps we can serve both our ends at the same time." Della reached inside her desk drawers and pulled out communication transcript. "This was compiled from numerous interrogation sessions at the hands of certified excruciator. They started with an interview…" Della clearly did not approve of the methods described in the report but the species of the victim made it more palpable. "When Sergeant Major Siggurd was done with the prisoner, the commissariat's specialist put the Eldar to the blade, his information was confirmed by psychic intrusions."

"All xenos are an aberration in the eyes of the Emperor," the scion said to banish any guilt at the prisoner's treatment. Sola took the file and quickly reviewed it, dedicating its contents to her memory coils. From Sola's tense features, it was clear that Sigismund would not have wished such an interrogation on any but the worst of his enemies. Fortunately, he had no love lost for the Eldar. They had nearly killed him, and had slain his friend. That fact alone was probably why an infestation had sprouted in the northern continent where the outpost had first been established.

Sigismund clapped his hands together to punctuate the conclusion of their meeting. "We will deploy our team of crack operatives to the northern front, assist in the resolution of the ork threat, and free the Imperial Guard's assets. When the time is right we will need them to ferret out the Eldar. Do you believe Lord Trevin will agree with this course of action?"

Della nodded. The scion smiled mischievously.

"All we need now Lady Della, is access to the private communication channel which you use with your husband. We need him to arrange our insertion with as little fuss as possible. His command seal should give us enough leeway to do so, then we get our hands on the first lead we have in this Eldar affair." Sigismund preened smugly, much to his audience's dismay. "All things considered, we should be done with both Orks and Eldar by luncheon this time next week."

-/-/-/-

Toth received the all clear and pulled the Aquila Lander out of its holding pattern above the northern Guard outpost. He had been delivering materials – and the haughty navigator - down to Ultra Primaris when his lighter had suspiciously blown a thermal exchanger. It was suspicious because Levi knew his ship inside and out and always made sure to run the pre-flight checks himself. Although he had been in no real danger at the time, Barnabus – his family's Arvus lighter- would have to wait on the repair crews to swap out the exchanger, and that would take a few days. It would be an impromptu rest period, or so Levi Toth had believed. Not a day later he was flying this heavily modified Aquila Lander, all extra armor and twin linked auto cannon with under slung rocket pods, into a war zone at the behest of his kidnaper and employer.

As the deceleration did its part to tussle the passengers, a rough landing considering Toth's skills, the ragtag band of specialists Sola had assembled at Sigismund's imperative unclipped their grav harness and gathered their gear. The vice factotum had done her best to locate and acquire each and every individual's peculiar taste in equipment while retaining some sort of anonymity. The result had been eclectic at best but at least it would not give away their identity and allegiances at first sight.

The first out of the lander's boarding ramp was Barr and his boys. Nius and Ferraro had both been at the ill-fated landing site of Sigs' surveyor outpost when the Eldar attacked and could be counted on to retain operational silence in the name of vengeance. The last storm trooper, Pennette, was their golden girl. Barr had assured Sola that the woman was the best the _Semper Fidelis_ ever had the honor of carrying aboard. She was a specialist in half a dozen fields and competent in all others they might need. A quick look at her war record confirmed Barr's opinion of her skills, and all it had taken to get her on board with this black ops was the storm trooper sergeant literally telling her she couldn't pull it off.

The four troopers scanned the area for threats despite being within the walled enclave of an Imperial bastion. They carried their weapons loosely but ready to be used in a moment's notice. Sigs followed with Sola, the first wearing a heavy carapace armor with a storm coat for a mantle and the second with an armored body glove shrouded by a cloak of unnaturally dark material, which strangely adopted the hues of her surroundings now that she had left the dark hold of the ship. Chastity skulked behind the pair, her gear similar in many ways to Sola's. Even without his regalia, the onetime captain radiated lordly authority. Sigs gave the waiting guardsmen on the tarmac a loose salute, which sent the trooper into a stiff parade ground greeting. Still waiting within the lander were the shadowy outlines of the three last member of the team, none of which were peculiarly gifted with social graces. Pollux, Devros, and Remi all stood uncomfortably next to each other waiting to be needed before volunteering their presence on the tarmac.

"Greetings sirs," said the nervous second lieutenant, "and ma'ams" he added. His curious eyes flitted from one member of the retinue to the next, pausing at Sola's long barreled boltgun and at the purple haired woman with the mocking smirk and the pixie cut. "Brigadier-Colonel Trevin has instructed me to collate the reports of the last 24 hours." He extended a file, which Sigismund ignored but let Sola take. The lordly man then patted the nervous officer on the back and dragged him along towards the bastion. The standard template construct building was a mixture of bunker, block house, and flak tower. It rose high, a blocky hexagonal slab offering shelter and protection as well as advantageous sight lines and a dedicated anti-aircraft quad cannon on its roof. The underground floors were filled with precious tech systems which powered the enclosed automated heavy bolter positions on each of its sides as well as the extended network of wall mounted guns along the enclave's perimeter.

"Lord Trevin is lucky to have such an astute officer under his command lieutenant…" said Sigismund.

"Jorund, sir." The man beamed with pride at the compliment.

"Good man you are, Jorund. I trust you also received the orders to turn over the prisoner, you know which one… into our custody, correct?" Sigismund kept the man walking. He was impatient to get into the fray and the longer he and his men were loitering around the Imperial outpost the more likely someone would start asking questions about the Brigadier-Colonel's strange orders. Not to mention the unaffiliated men stomping around a secure area such as this.

"Yes sir, though the prisoner has come under commissariat jurisdiction." Said lieutenant Jorund.

"Which means?" Sigismund was unaware of all the red tape involved in the ground lover's affairs. He usually by-passed the Dynasty's own bureaucracy by dint of his name and didn't care much for anyone else's.

The party had now left the landing zone and was closing in on the bastion, with its armed guards and their 'identification required' stares. "Which means sir that Lord Trevin's orders can be refused by the commissariat if they deem it inappropriate. And pardon the candor sir but these orders are strange indeed, they will most likely refuse outright."

Sigismund threw Barr a look for confirmation. The storm trooper nodded. "I take it there's nothing else you can do for us on this matter lieutenant?"

"No sir," the young man said, clearly shamed to be letting such an august personage down. "I'm afraid not."

Sigismund squeezed the man's shoulder reassuringly, throwing him one of his trademark smiles. "You did you best soldier. Just make sure our ship is attended to and ready to go, we can't afford to be slowed down. The very world and its every inhabitant are counting on it. On you, Jorund..."

The officer saluted, chest puffed with pride, and jogged off towards the landing zone to arrange for the ship's unequivocal readiness.

"Laying it a bit thick there Sigs." Sola's brow was furrowed. The party met the guards at the bastion's reinforced gates and Barr barked off some Guard lingo, curt and nonsensical to the uninitiated, before handing over the order forms which Lady Della had provided for them from her betrothed's study.

"Put the weight of the world on a man's shoulder and he will be crushed. Tell him he's the only one who can do it and he will keep it aloft until the Emperor rises from his throne," said the scion.

"Still," muttered Sola. Sigismund grinned back, soothing her objections to his overly dramatic flair for attention. The gate guards seemed content with the papers Barr had handed them and voxed the all clear. The gates slid on well-oiled tracks and allowed Sigismund's party in. The gate, as well as the surrounding plasteel layers, were nearly a meter thick. If it came to it they could take a direct it from an armor piercing shell from a Baneblade. Little in the galaxy could take a second.

The interior of the bastion was several degree cooler and the bright sunshine which bathe the world outside was replaced by artificial phosphorescent lights. Sigs turned to Sola, "I need you to go look into this jurisdiction business. Every minute we stay here is another they have to chip at our cover. When they start asking questions it will be too late for us."

"I'm on it." Sola peeled off from the group and headed down a different passage with Chastity at her heels, ever her shadow.

Sigs navigated the corridors of the bastion, gathering a share of dirty looks as he and his outfit stood out against the military dress code. Their right to prowl about the bastion was challenged by a few guards and their officers until they were eventually escorted to the stockade which held the xenos. As expected, a commissar was on duty to guard against spiritual corruption. By the looks of him, he fit the interrogator's profile from Della's intelligence package.

"Halt!" commanded the black clad enforcer. He even held up a hand, his other having drawn his bolt pistol and keeping at his side.

Sigs lifted his hands as a peace offering but was clearly nonplussed at the trigger happy commissar's reaction. The veteran sergeant overseeing the half of dozen pens the bastion called a brig took a deep calming breath. Seeing how zealous the moral officer was, the sergeant had probably seen this scene played out numerous times already. Sigismund was ready to bet the sergeant had been on the receiving end of it quite a few times.

"We're all friends here Commissar Ventium," said Sigismund.

"Identify yourself cur, after which you can tell me how you know my name!" The gun man was now holding his pistol in a two handed grip. Point blank did not do justice to the distance the man was brandishing his weapon. The stockade was barely ten meters deep from the door. Barr and his men had not escalated the situation by drawing their own weapons, but Sigismund had seen their likes draw and fire a few rounds in the time it took to blink.

"I'm on orders from Brigadier-Colonel Trevin to take this prisoner to an advance interrogation local. A Black site. Which means it and my identity are none of your concern commissar. Now lower the weapon, as I said, we're all on the same side here."

The bolt pistol never wavered. "The xenos is a moral threat designated xeno majoris and is under commissariat supervision. As befitting its role outside the Imperial Guard command structure, the commissariat is not required to acquiesce to the Imperial Commander's _orders_."

That last bit had been chalk full of spite. Lieutenant Jorund had not been kidding. They really took pleasure in their status apart and above the chain of command. Barr was keen for a signal from the scion, although he didn't revel in the need to kill imperial servants, he wasn't above it to fulfill the mission's objective. If Sigismund gave the go ahead, the commissar and the sergeant skulking at the edge of the room would be dead. The subsequent walk out of the bastion would be problematic however.

"Trust me Commissar Ventium, I have experience with xenos. I can handle the prisoner," Sigismund pleaded fairly.

"That does not make me trust you at all, scum!" The commissar was turning his face so that his voice would carry clearly behind him, eyes still focused on the intruders. "If they attempt to force their way to the prisoner's cell sergeant Gaston, your orders are to unload your sidearm into the xenos. You have my permission to open the cell and enter it. You will be reviewed for taint afterwards. Understood!"

The veteran sergeant nodded and confirmed his orders before heading to the cell door. Barr watched the man take out his jailor's keys and cast him a glance. The storm trooper shook his head from side to side as slowly as he could. The veteran seemed to weight his options and eventually opened the cell with a frustrated sigh.

"Clearly, we are not going to get anywhere with this conversation," Sigismund admitted.

Both the commissar and the storm troopers tensed visibly.

"And we are not going to have a shoot-out either," clarified the scion as the room filled with nervous energy. "So we are going to do this your way Ventium." Sigs raised his hands up a little higher and gave the commissar a telling expression. "In a few minutes you are going to have a call on your vox telling you that the commissariat has agreed to release the prisoner into our care. Then, you will lower your pistol, hand over the Eldar, and we are all going to forget this ever happened."

The commissar chuckled darkly. "I highly doubt that, scoundrel."

Twenty minutes later Sigismund's group was walking up the boarding ramp of the Aquila Lander, Elamnyl in tow. The xenos was a sorry mess. He had been beaten, cut, and deprived of the opportunity to relieve himself. Doubtlessly, the creature had not slept, eaten, or drank anything considerable. Barr stomped up the ramp carrying the Eldar on a gurney with the help of Ferraro. They quickly set Elamnyl down to allow Pollux to inspect him. The lander was already cramped, the companions being three too many for its seats, so the VIP lounge had been quickly modified. It was in this area now, once carpeted and filled with comfort, which Pollux began to attend the Eldar.

"You're going to have to tell me how you managed to convince them to let the Eldar go. Ventium was less than reasonable," remarked Sigismund.

Sola gave him a playful smile. "A girl has to have some secrets Sigs. You already know all the important ones, you could at least spare me divulging my trade secrets. Did you doubt I would succeed?"

"No, not for a moment. I even gave up my weapons to that gun totting maniac." Sigismund was patting the weight of the power sword at his hip, reassured with its return. He also had relinquish a bolt pistol, a fractal knife, and a snub nosed plasma pistol which had been secreted away in a concealable holster. Much to the commissar's deeply suspicious scrutiny. It was a testament to Sola's logistical prowess, preparedness, as well as deep pockets, to have found and purchased so much gear in so little time. And this for the entire outfit.

"Attention," called adept Pollux as she craned her mechanical neck up to focus on Sigismund and Sola. "Xenobiology is not my area of expertise. Treatment success rates reduced to approximately 63.72%. Permission to proceed with first aid protocols despite unknown biological variables?"

Above her shoulder, Devros the twist catcher peered with unusual interest at the prone form of the Eldar. His harness was still festooned with gadgets and tools, but they along with his body glove and flak cloak were new and, more importantly, devoid of the nauseating smells drudged out from the under decks. Sigismund gave the permission and Pollux's medicae mechadendrite began to rip what little clothing Elamnyl had left. The snaking arm hummed with the use of its diagnostic optics and its long probes pricked the Eldar with serums before disinfecting his lacerations.

The storm troopers were already settling themselves in their grav couches with their gear stowed away. The indignant pile of micro-weave robes simmering in his seat let Sola know that Remi require her attention. He was swathe from head to toe in thick wraps to hide his obvious inhumanity as well as his tell-tale unearthly grace. The vice factotum squeezed Sigs' arm to let him now she was leaving and set off. The ship itself could not take off until Pollux was done making sure Elamnyl would live long enough to be of use, so Sigs made his way to the cock pit as Chastity continued to glare distrustfully at Remi and her mistress from her grav seat.

The scion squeezed himself into the co-pilot seat behind Toth, the elevated position allowing him to look down and survey all the instrument's readings. Sigismund had long ago learned to fly both atmospheric and void crafts as part of his upbringing but he was not skilled at it, hence Toth's undisputable role in this endeavor.

"Once again into the breach my friend," Sigismund said as he adjusted the headset and spoke into the internal vox channel.

Toth shifted and looked over his shoulder with an air of carefully checked exasperation. "Friend? I believe you may be confusing my feelings towards you, sir."

Sigs chuckled. "Not at all Toth. You're dependable and that makes you my friend."

The pilot shook his head and faced his instruments again, running through some instrument checks. "You are aware I dislike you, right? Or are you so used to that it takes a whole lot of it before you start questioning people's loyalty?"

"Levi Toth, of Toth and Sons, 3rd generation orbital freight pilot, you have every right to dislike me. You do. Yet you have never once cause me or my ship any trouble. I have not receive a single complaint about your work in my service, did you know that?"

"No, sir. I did not."

"Men with less of a reason than yours hate me, Levi. They cause me no end of trouble. Take this little game we are playing right now. We are going to save millions of people while hiding the colors of our allegiance, all in the service of a Dynasty which refuses to sanction our involvement, or indeed even offer their help, with a team of self-interested killers, myself included, who are here only because it suits them."

Toth was waiting for the inevitable reveal which the captain - no, the disgraced scion - was undoubtedly working towards.

"And why is it that you, of all people, agreed to participate?"

Toth took a moment to think about it. "Because I was asked to?"

"Because you were asked to…" The scion parroted the words as if they held the answer in themselves. Sigismund smiled as he received confirmation of the xenos' stable condition in his headset. "Because I can depend on you. Despite what I did to you. Because I can depend on you doing what's right." The scion leaned over and tapped the pilot on the shoulder to give him the go ahead to launch. Toth flipped a few switches, carefully stroked the command column to life, and ignited the vertical takeoff thrusters.

As the Aquila lander powered into the sky to its next destination, Toth wondered why exactly the Emperor had allowed a scoundrel like Sigismund to take him away from his life of pleasant servitude. Why had he been put in the hands of a devilish debonair and his entourage of madmen? How did that served his divine majesty's will in anyway? Was he only a loyal tool in the machinations of the one true god? And if so, why Sigismund of all people?

"I guess the Emperor truly does favor the bold," Toth muttered in his head set.

"That he does," answered Sigismund, oblivious to Toth's musings. "That he does."

-/-/-/-

They had come to take him away from the darkness and the pain. It had been foretold. Elamnyl slipped in and out of consciousness. The past few days had been a blur of maddening suffering. The man with the scarred face had hated the pathfinder simply for existing, but his honor had held his hand. That man with the cut face had despised torture, it was clear to see, and would have given Elamnyl a clean death. But not the specter in black.

That one thirsted like the dark kin. His hands battered Elamnyl's flesh. His knives parted his skin and excised the flesh beneath. The sadist had plied food and water as leverage to make the pathfinder talk, but there had never been more to say. The Eldar had come in good faith and with honest information, and he had been mistrusted and tortured. Rung for every drop of truth he had already given them. When the specter, full of hate and venomous spite, had failed to gleam new information, the mon-keigh had rapped his mind with their crude attempts. But it was over, and they had come to take him from the darkness and the pain.

Elamnyl had been barely aware of the warmth soothing his body as they took him out of the crude tower the mon-keigh sheltered in. Barely but aware. Through pained eyes and blurry vision he had seen him. He had seen the mon-keigh prince which had led the desecration of the maiden world. Elamnyl's weak frame had shook from the exertion of his timid laugh. How ironic, the Crone's woven threads were. Was this why Ulliasen had made him miss? Was the survival of this ape lord the only way he would have escaped the darkness and the pain. The only way the humans would prevail against the wicked wit of the ork mek boss? The only way to save thousands of his kinsmen from death fighting the terrible and stubborn greenskin foe?

The intrusion of cold metal in his flesh made him twitch while the machine man of the mon-keigh tended him. No, it had been a woman once, before all the metal and the wires, before the mutilation. Why were humans so obsessed with destroying nature's beauty?

Soon it would be over. Soon Elamnyl would have his revenge and his son would rest in peace. Or rather, the pathfinder imagined he would, and that though was mollifying to his guilt wracking psyche. The dead cared not for the foolishness of the living. Caielle had told him so, the Farseer had told him much of what would come to pass.

As Elamnyl slipped into slumber once more, the crude primitive treatment of the machine woman was beginning to have an effect. Soothing warmth, not unlike the maiden world's sun, swept over him. His thirst abated. His mind stopped tearing at the seams, and the abomination hidden within the robes finally looked away from him. The pathfinder knew the creature had sensed his psychic agony, and it was thankful Elamnyl was finally silent.


	12. Chapter 12

_**Into the Breach:**_

_**Part 12**_

The moment Evangeline stepped into Sola's private chambers, she felt a pang of guilt. The vice factotum had been nothing but supportive. She had encouraged Evangeline to step up, take command, and when the young girl had done so awkwardly, Sola had been right by her side. Yet here she was, watching a score of armsmen search her quarters with wanton abandon. Ribella was heading the search like a blood hound, ransacking Sola's private possession in her reckless hunt for secrets. It pained Evangeline to watch the desecration, treating Sola like a common criminal despite the lack of proper sanction. But with Sola missing, having abandoned her post, the vice factotum had eschewed her right to representation in the eyes of the Dynasty.

Sola was now a renegade, and Ribella treated her like it. According to information acquired by Lucretia, which was subsequently confirmed by the Lady Dynast, Sola had deviously convinced Sigismund to plot against the Dynasty. It didn't sound like the kind, caring woman Evangeline had known but with her entire family involved, there was little room for dissent. Even her father had remained silent. He had not commanded Sigismund found, nor Sola's death, but he had not defended them either. Perhaps Anthonid awaited evidence of Sola's involvement in his son's eloping to pass judgment. Evidence which Evangeline had been best placed to find. And so at her family's behest, here she was.

The young captain tightened her ponytail and adjusted her scarlet uniform, its ostentatious gold braiding both embellishing and authoritative, and extended her arms to make sure her cuffs were at their proper length. It was a finicky habit, but one which helped her ignore the creeping sense of dishonor she felt at this invasion of her friend's sanctuary. Chief Bosun Ribella stomped to her captain's side as her men continued to pry every inch of the room apart.

"We haven't found anything incriminating as of yet, but the vice factotum certainly has a suspicious amount of security in her quarters," said the old arbites. Ribella seemed to find the luxury surrounding her offensive.

"Last I checked, that was not a crime," said Evangeline, a little too defensively. Ribella furrowed her brow, then nodded.

"I realize you are in a difficult position captain, but discipline and order must be maintained. The factotum is hiding something. I have seen too many renegade hideouts to be wrong about this. As soon as we have opened her crypto-vault and adept Leitchwig convinces the desk cogitator to allow us access, you will see."

Evangeline bristled slightly. She realized the chief was simply doing her duty, but the self-assured ease with which she condemned Sola tried the captain's patience. From across the large living room, the armsmen worked a large safe with crowbar and torch, trying to open it without damaging the contents within. The young captain wandered away from Ribella, who had returned to barking orders at her subordinates. Evangeline shook her head at the brisk fashion the armsmen conducted their investigation. When she finally reached Sola's bedchambers, the youth's ire reached its peak.

"You!" bellowed Evangeline. An armsmen was ravaging the fine silks of Sola's dresses, throwing them about the room in his search. He had done this with every item of clothing found within the room's dressers. The soldier had even thrown the vice factotum's more private items of clothing about the room for all to see, with utter shamelessness and contempt.

The armsmen snapped to attention and saluted. "Ma'am!"

A sudden silence spread across the quarters as Evangeline slowly walked to the offending soldier. Ribella appeared at the bedroom's threshold behind the captain. The captain's rage boiled, "Have you no shame armsmen? This is an investigation, not a raid!"

The soldier was taken aback, he sputtered feebly. "My apologize ma'am!"

Evangeline sneered. "Discipline and order must be maintained. Am I wrong Chief Bosun?"

"No, captain," Ribella said reluctantly, for she had been no less delicate in her own search.

"Ten strokes to be administered immediately," ordered Evangeline. The captain turned on her heels and glared at Ribella as she walked out of the room. "I believe your maul will do nicely for a caning, chief bosun. You may begin."

The armsmen still stood stock still, a bead of sweat rolling down his brow as he watched his superior reluctantly unlimber her power maul. The chief would not disobey a direct order, nor would she shirk her duties. The punishment would be thorough. The armsmen's mates stepped into the room and helped him take off his carapace armor, bracing him to receive the strokes.

The first grunts of pain began to echo through the vice factotum's quarters. Soldiers made sure to stay out of the captain's way and resumed their search with a great deal more respect. The captain's message had been clear. Lady Villanueva was still innocent until proven otherwise and every indignity visited upon her person or property would be punished according to naval law.

A bosun approached the captain with a rigid salute. "Captain, we have opened the crypto-vault. The chief ordered us to bring anything of note to the first available officer. Which…" the bosun frowned at the sound of another meaty thump, "is you at the moment."

"Thank you bosun, continue with your _investigation_," stressed the captain.

The man turned in a leather bound journal of sorts, locked by an ornamental clasp, and departed in earnest. Evangeline ran her hands along the delicate stitching of the journal, marveling at its workmanship. She slowly flipped through the pages, her eyes catching glimpses of painstakingly scratched letters. The book was as much a piece of art as its calligraphy. The captain stopped on a page at random and began to read the scriveners thoughts.

The journal belonged to the late steward, Hubert. How it had come into Sola's possession was mystery. Sigismund had cleaned out the avuncular man's quarters upon his passing, perhaps he had entrusted its keeping to the vice factotum. Whatever happenstance had delivered the steward's diary to Evangeline was undoubtedly strange, but no stranger than the words she read.

Evangeline closed the journal with sudden urgency before looking around her surrounding with wide eyes. She panicked for a moment, then tucked the book under her arm before walking out of Sola's quarters. She needed to examine the journals contents in private, for the last entry dedicated to its pages hinted at something of monumental importance for the Dynasty.

Something which threatened to tear her family apart.

-/-/-/-

The Aquila Lander banked hard, cork screwing rockets flying by its hull. Toth depressed the firing stud and send a storm of heavy bolter shell into the jagged rocks of the mountain side. The pilot stifled an excited quip. Toth had never fired a weapon and the power at his fingertips was exhilarating.

"Steady there," counseled Sigismund in the copilot seat behind Toth. "I don't think you hit anything, but they stopped firing so there's that at least." The scion smiled as the craft described a graceful arc and powered on towards the Imperial Guard camp at the foot of the craggy mountain. Youthful exuberance was not something he witnessed often these days. Gone were the days were young men first joined battle in the name of the Dynasty. Sigismund was surrounded by grizzled veterans now and his own excitement only came when he gambled with his life. It was refreshing to see Toth experience his first battle action, however.

The team, with their hostage in tow, had flown to the position last reported by the Guard. The broiled carcasses of vehicles littered the plains leading to the ork's stronghold deep in the northern mountain range. Whatever manoeuvers had been undertaken had cost the Guard quite a few armored vehicles, but thankfully, ork vehicles were found aplenty amongst the still burning wrecks.

Toth left the mountains behind as he flew towards the Imperial lines. He had not been thrilled when Sigismund had ordered him to fly above the enemy position for a "quick look", but he was rather thankful now. His heart beat a furious tattoo in his chest and he felt more alive than ever. Toth understood now why Sigismund's ilk were so willing to test their skill in battle. Toth made a roundabout and prepared to land. Tank turrets and shoulder mounted launchers were pointed at the Lander as it deployed its clawed landing gears. By the look of the cratered mountain side and the still billowing pillars of blackened smoke, it was no wonder the Guard were so wound up. The Lander was safely set down as Toth's adrenaline dump started to make his hands shake. Before the pilot could say anything to the scion, Sigismund had already unbuckled himself from his grav couch and was heading down into the passenger hold.

With a nod of his head, the handpicked operative checked their weapons and grabbed their kits. Sigs slammed the release rune and the boarding ramp began to sink to the ground. "Nice and easy boys, these guardsmen have had a hard time and I don't want any friendly fire."

Specialist Pennette smirked as she walked by Sigismund. "Ain't no such thing as friendly fire voidborn."

The storm troopers followed her lead in disembarking, the last of them being Barr. "Don't mind her sir, she's cocky but she's worth it."

Sigismund smiled broadly and clasp his hand on the shoulder guard of the trooper's carapace armor. "No foul sergeant, I like my soldiers confident. It's the quiet ones who always run first, in my experience." Barr nodded and hoisted his hell gun onto his shoulder. His troopers would not usually disembark so nonchalantly but the captain was right, moving down the ramp in tactical formation and securing their position would either irk their commander's pride or make a shell shock guardsmen stroke his trigger a little too fast.

Sigismund adjusted the storm coat on his shoulders and threw Sola a look before following the last of the operatives down. He gave Remi the traditional 'don't kill anyone look' and received the usual dismissive shrug in response. Despite all their difficulties Sigismund knew that Remi was deftly capable of weighting the odds of survival in any fight, and never started one he couldn't win. The problem was he didn't care how many bodies piled up, as long as it wasn't his.

Sola stroked Chastity's cheek affectionately as the dim lighting of the hold was replaced by red tinted illumination. "This is the most important task in our endeavor Chastity, I need you and Devros to carry it out."

"But mistress," argued the young bodyguard. "My place is at your side! Let me protect you." She was wearing the same skin tight body glove the factotum sported. It was subtly armored and hid her presence from most auspex devices and preysense imaging, at least, when the cowl and mask were worn. Her power armor was locked in storage aboard the Lander, along with her bolter.

"I am not your mistress Chastity, I am your friend. And as your friend I ask this favor of you. Go and return the Eldar to his kind with my message. The fate of this world may depends on it." The two women locked eyes. Sola's soft pleading gaze meeting the youth's rambunctious, and more importantly, pained eyes.

"I thought you trusted me," said Chastity as she lowered her head.

Sola's delicate fingers lifted her chin. "I do," she said. The factotum offered the child a last encouraging nod before walking away. The last thing Chastity saw before Sola disappeared down the ramp was the foreboding silhouette of the massive Angelus bolt rifle strapped to her back. The young bodyguard bitterly turned on her heels to go secure the hostage. Her way was blocked by the burly frame of the twist catcher. She looked up into the craggy one-eyed face of the bounty hunter.

"You're blocking my way," the youth snarled.

"Aye, I am." The broad man crossed his arms over his chest, his many tools jangling with the motion. He made no attempts to move aside or into one of the grav couch rows. "Listen here, squirt," Devros craned his neck in the direction of the Eldar who was generously secured into his grav seat a few meters away, and seemingly sleeping. "I'm not entirely happy with being teamed up with a girl who could be one of my bastards' offspring. But if the captain and Lady Villanueva put you on the job, well then, I fancy you must be the real deal." The twist catcher turned his attention to Chastity again once he was convince the Eldar wasn't spying on them.

"Them xenos are sneaky gits, and the Eldar are the sneakiest little skeevies there are, savvy? So let's not grumble about our fates and give' em any ideas to use against us. You with me little one?" The broad killer leaned over and patted her head, an awkward act of camaraderie, and stepped aside to let Chastity get on with her business.

Chastity nodded, her features softening. Perhaps the old mercenary had a point. After all, Sola had seen fit to team her up with a man whose sole activity in life was hunting down dangerous mutants and capturing them. The man was clearly competent and the task was potentially very dangerous. The mission could not afford a liability, and Chastity had never know Sola to make a miscalculation. If indeed their match up was beneficial, then it could only mean that the bodyguard brought something to the mix which increased their success rate, as the factotum would have put it.

Chastity walked over to the Eldar and checked his restrains again. They were not the kind which limited escape, but rather ensured his continued safety and wellbeing, like the kind the medicae used to bind and brace wounds. As the girl readjusted one particular tight sling which forced the Eldar's arm at an awkward angle, the xenos' watery eyes found hers, blinking away his somnolence.

"Thank you," he whispered through parched lips. His Gothic was a little more melodic then she was used to, but it was well spoken. Chastity nodded, taken aback slightly by the creature's genuine relief. She walked away troubled by the thought that had snaked its way into her mind.

If Devros was a man whose skills ensured he could track a fleeing quarry, which was presumably the reason why he had been assigned to the delivery of this hostage, then did it mean Chastity had been chosen to assure he was delivered unharmed? And if so, who was she supposed to protect him from?

-/-/-/-

The offensive was threatening to stall again. This, Colonel Brisbane of the Persephonian 3rd would not allow. Of all the senior officers in the battle group, Brigadier-Colonel Trevin had chosen Brisbane to accompany him to the front. It was a great honor to be handpicked for this action when the colonels of the four other regiments were left to police and secure New Pariden with the majority of their forces. While his peers wadded through paperwork, Brisbane would be wadding through ork blood! That is, if those damned greenskin would stop using damned chokepoints!

"Onwards sons of Persephony, onwards!" bellowed the colonel. A great cheer rose amongst the ranks and the foremost edge of his line surged forward. H Company's 2nd platoon charged out of their cover within the winding tunnels of the ork stronghold and into the great gallery. Gantries and shoddy metal walls filled the gallery, a veritable fort of ork design. Its twisting kill zones made no sense and the layout was a chaotic mess which only made the assault more difficult. Large caliber shells rained down on the men of 2nd platoon as they braved the storm. Their sacrificed allowed for their company's 3rd, 4th, and 5th platoon to move out of the chokepoint, their armor plated boots stepping over their recently cut down brothers.

The Persephonian main line regiment was up to their wretched task. Their bolters barked as they walked out into the open ground in front of the ork fortifications, chewing through the greenskins' piecemeal armors. The orks' checkered patterns and red paint jobs did little to deter the armor piercing explosive shells. Each heavy infantry squad was equipped with a heavy flamer and a plasma gun, in addition to frag and krak grenades, and the sergeants carried melta bombs. The 3rd was a front line force, an assault regiment, heavy carapace knights battling dismounted. There was little which could stand in their way… theoretically. In all practicality, the orks of the mountain were doing a good job at bleeding them dry.

Flame and plasma fire heralded volleys of hand grenades, blasting the saw toothed parapets of the enemy fortification clear of any opposition. The smaller greenskins manned the clanking guns atop the gantries and walls, those died easily enough. It was the full blooded orks which proved difficult to handle, the very same which would come pouring out of the makeshift gate H company was trying to crack. Lord Trevin had ordered the company to draw the ork boyz out into the south passages while he struck the gallery fortification from the eastern tunnels. Brisbane had taken command of the company assigned to the task, much to the Brigadier-Colonel's approval. No true highborn in service to the Guard would have done otherwise, the elites of Persephony lead from the front.

The colonel followed in the wake of the second wave, Captain von Hilstrum and his command squad providing protection for their regimental commander. A blistering rate of fire peppered the thin metal structures supporting the small greenskins high up in the gallery, the explosions twisting the frames and dropping the snot colored xenos to their death.

Any moment now, Brisbane thought.

Not waiting on their deaths to come, units from the 4th platoon hurdled over the bodies of their brothers to allow their sergeants to plant their melta bombs on the chewed up enemy walls.

Any moment now.

Magnetic clamps locked on tight, runes were pressed and prayers spoken.

Any moment now.

H Company was wearing thin, having lost most of its men in a series of assault much like this one along the way. The demolition charges were almost set. The ground started to rumble. The gallery shook. The gates opened of their own accord.

"Waaaaaaghhhhhhh!" the war cry resonated from a hundred excited throats.

A wall of rippling muscular green flesh surged from the gates. Their ramshackle weapons barked and spewed clouds of smoke. Sluggas, shootas, and choppas swung in the air. Then the greenskins, who were led by freakishly large nobs, charged at the guardsmen. The bolter volleys dropped a pitiful few before the inevitable melee was joined.

One of the larger xenos wadded through the bodies of guardsmen with the kind of ease usually reserved for a gardener trimming the hedges. Men were flung aside and cleaved by his big revving choppa. Worst of all, he was heading straight for Colonel Brisbane. Captain von Hilstrum snapped a brave salute and followed his men to intercept. Brave lad that Hilstrum, he would be missed. Brisbane clasped a hand to his ear and activated his comm bead.

"The swine have flooded out Brigadier-Colonel, the deed is done. Remember H Company! For Persephony, for His Most Holy Majesty!" Brisbane drew his saber, and made to join captain von Hilstrum.

A little less than a few hundred meters to the north east, Trevin acknowledged Brisbane's communication and signaled E company to start the attack. Captain Frost, her long braid whipping with the stroke of her saber, charged with her men towards the vulnerable enemy fortification. They would meet little resistance, and if all went according to plan, they would lay waste to the fort's defenses and move in to flank the ork boyz who even now pressed H Company to the brink of defeat.

Jensen Melot flicked his lho stick into the dark recesses of the tunnel and began to strap his helmet on. The sergeant disliked the protective gear, having fought years without it, especially its tendency to mess up his hair. But even he was not fool enough to gamble with his life so eagerly. "It's going to be bloody Gus."

Trevin agreed and drew his command squad closer. Corvin was visibly straining at the leash, the pilot light on his flamer revealing his eager face. Lancer's left eye kept twitching whenever the vox on his back crackled, but his grasp on his melta gun was firm. Steld was quiet as usual, but ready to go at a moment's notice.

"All right then," Melot sighed, hefting the weight of his plasma gun. "How do you want to do this, Gus?"

"Like we always do." Trevin cast Steld a look. She was the only member of the team who lacked the synergy a decade on Kursk had bestowed on its survivors. "Watch our backs Laura, as soon as those gates are open," he pointed at the fortification without sparing it a glance, "we'll follow Frost and her boys and hook right. They can smash the place up while we support Brisbane from what's left of the walls. No one gets into melee, understood?"

The question was addressed to the unit, but everyone's eyes were glued to Corvin, who absent mindedly stroked the machete strapped to his thigh. "Understood!" Trevin repeated. Corvin snapped out of his daze, prying his eyes away from the carnage reluctantly.

"Yeah Gus, no choppy choppy. But I am gonna roast me some greenshanks."

"Fair enough," conceded the commander.

Trevin waved E company's reserves into action and the command squad jogged at their side. Lancer's nervous wheezing drew Trevin's attention. "Augustus, I have a transmission. It's a bit garbled but I think it pertains to the Lord Captain, Sigismund Lucius."

Trevin reached out and took the vox horn, the pair keeping up with the reserves even as Frost was taking her best through the now breached ork gates. "Patch me through," ordered the Brigadier-Colonel. He tried to keep his voice level despite jogging over the broken ground, the charge now building momentum.

"This had better be good," he yelled into the horn, fighting to be heard over the sound of explosions and bolter fire in the near distance. "I'm about to do the Emperor's work, and you're keeping me from it!"

-/-/-/-

The slaughter had been brief, but it had been bloody. This much Sigismund could make out from the ruins of the orkish fort and the bodies which covered the gallery floor. The xenos corpses outnumbered the Imperials three-to-one but most of those were gretchin. Sigismund was impressed none the less. The orks had outnumbered the Guard, held a choke point, and manned defensive fortifications – albeit flimsy ones. Trevin had either been very skilled or very lucky in the execution of his attack. By the scions count, little more than a hundred men laid dead, when it should have been at least three times as many.

The tunnels were a honeycomb of passages but the Guard had cleaned them rather efficiently. Sigs' party had only met a handful of ork stranglers on their way to meet the Brigadier-Colonel, and those had been taken care of easily by the troopers to the fore or Remi at the aft of the group. The navigator never passed an opportunity to vent his frustrations on xenos, he liked to meet them eye-to-eye.

"Well met Lord Trevin," Sigismund raised a hand as he approached the veteran commander. Trevin looked up, still wiping the ork blood from his deactivated power sword. His furred cloak was splashed with bright arterial blood, but whether it was human or xenos, Sigismund could not say. The look in the commander eyes gave him a clue, however.

"You find the worst of times to appear Lord Sigismund. I would have expected you to greet me months ago and fulfill your obligations instead of having me chase you through layers of bureaucracy and dynasty facto."

Sigismund shrugged apologetically. Behind Trevin, two of his soldiers were having words. A blood soaked man with a feral stare was offering his flamer's pilot light to his comrade, who lit his lho stick amiably before smacking his friend behind the head and throwing himself into a barrage of insults revolving around the machete his feral companion was using to collect ork teef. Trevin followed Sigismund's wandering gaze but didn't seem worried.

"Well, yes, things have been complicated," admitted the scion.

"So Josephine tells me. But if she trusts you then so do I. So tell me, oh lord of the Lucius Dynasty, what brings you here, exactly?"

Sigismund wrapped an arm around the Imperial commander's shoulder and pulled him aside to speak more privately, but the Brigadier-Colonel brushed the presumption of familiarity away and gave Sigs a withering look.

"Alright then," began the scion. "We have two enemies, one hidden and one angry. I figured I'd lend a hand with the angry one. Besides," Sigismund mauled the rest of his sentence before speaking it, "I have a feeling I may know the big mek causing all the trouble. Its time I did something about that."

Trevin scowled. "I had a feeling you would say something like that. If this ork escapes the Emperor's justice in any way, I will hold you personally responsible lord captain."

Sigismund was gauging how much of Trevin's words were genuine and how much were an idle threat. He didn't expected the commander was not one to utter empty promises. "You have my word Brigadier-Colonel, the ork boss dies tonight." The two man shared a nod of understanding.

"Reports!" came running a twitchy coms officer. The man stopped beside Trevin and stood on guard, saluting. One of his eyes was fixed on his commander and friend, the other wavered in Sigismund's direction. "Captain Parcels' J Company were unable to hold the next check point sir! Ork forces have barged through and are heading to this position, light and heavy armor amongst their numbers, as well as a walker, sir!" The coms officer's thin mustache wiggled as he awaited his commander's orders.

Trevin cursed himself for choosing not to endanger his armor in the tunnels. Despite his choice being _tactica imperialis_ approved, for the honeycomb tunnels would have made the Imperial armor extremely vulnerable to tank busting infantry, he had little to counter the ork vehicles now.

"Can you hold them?" asked Sigismund.

"Only at great costs. Why, do you have a plan?"

"My adept has analyzed all the data your forces have forwarded to your camp on the tunnels, including the most likely source of power the orks are using to fuel their incubation chamber. She…"

Pollux stepped into the conversation unbidden. "I have ascertained that the xenos mekaniaks use the thermals from the planet's mantle to power their aberration, include the equipment necessary to mine and extract the minerals and carbon fuel they used to supply their budding waaagh!" Adept Pollux slipped a holo-disk projector from her red sleeves. It projected a mass of tunnels and chambers in a three dimensional map. "I have compiled this directional aid following your reports and the natural geological formations of this region. A catastrophic failure of the naturally occurring magma shunts would rob the incubator of its power and flood the lower tunnels where most of the orks should be loitering."

Trevin didn't exactly grasped how the adept had come to her conclusion, but he understood the advantage it gave him if she were right. "You are saying that if we blow this section here," the commander prodded the holo-projection, "then the lava will drain into the tunnels and the incubator will be denied its power. Good. That's in enemy tunnels though, we haven't clear it and we won't be able to if we hold this check point. The greenskins use this cave system as a highway and it will take all I have to stop the orks from using it to escape the net I have cast."

"You won't have to," offered Sigismund. "Leave it to me and my people. We will rupture the shunt. I think it will be obvious when we do. Then all you have to do is retreat in proper order pass this point here." He joined Trevin in stabbing at the projection, much to Pollux's irritation, who had labelled every tunnel with alpha-numeric designations to facilitate navigational discussion. "And you should be safe. After which, I'll go settle the score with the mek boss."

From the lip of the gallery, Colonel Brisbane hollered. "Contact! Form lines! First rank, fire! Second rank, fire!"

Trevin quickly clasped Sigismund's forearm and retrieved his helmet. His command squad formed on him and they hurried to the contact zone. Remi and Sola were discussing in conspiring tones while Barr, Nius, Ferraro, and Pennette were scanning the party's surroundings as if daring the somber, roughhewed walls to make a move.

The bellowing officer's voice boomed like a titan's. "Plasma guns on maximals! Slag those Junkers! For von Hilstrum, guardsmen of the 3rd! For the Emperor!" As the dark tunnels were bathed in the light of new born suns, Sigismund shielded his eyes. He turned to Pollux inviting her to leave, but she was already leagues ahead of him.

"Well Siggy," the scion muttered to himself. "Time to show the Emperor you were worth all those lucky breaks he threw your way."

-/-/-/-

"Ere'we go, ere' we go, ere' we go boyz!" Knuckles yanked the chain that sent his air horns blaring and gunned the engine. His battlewagon with its complement of gretchins, courtesy of nails, pulverized stone as its tracks and wheels dug into the tunnel's surface. The rumbling beast began to lumber forward setting the entire mob surrounding it into action. The last of the boys were all here, under Knuckles' command. The biggest, meanest, and greenest of the orks left in the Evil Sunz tribe were careening down the darkened corridors at break neck speed, their only illumination the large spotlights welded to their handle bars. It had been fun playing with the humies but it was time to get down to the business of stompin'.

Ork bikers zipped by on their way to the big cave where the humies were squatting. They cackled madly as they raked their choppas against the speed tunnel's walls, sending a shower of sparks over the half trakks and buggies which followed closely behind. The fluttering ambers only increased the communal sense of waaagh! the orks were feeling. Here and there, orks tried fancy manoeuvers on their way to the fight, their speed freak nature coming to the fore in the absence of a brawl. More than a few smashed themselves against the unyielding stone walls, much to their kin's enjoyment. The survivors, which were by far the majority of them, escorted the shambling Deff Dread. The speed freaks used all of their tiny willpower waiting on the slower walker to thunder on. If it hadn't been so big, shooty, and stompy, they would have gone on ahead. But they didn't want to miss seeing it in action.

Knuckles pulled up the rear with his battlewagon and a handful of looted tanks. The speed tunnel they were using was the only one big enough to allow the mob to move as one. The humies had known it too, because they fought the hardest at the junctions where it passed. Knuckles blew the horn again, blasting the tunnel with ear numbing noise. They rounded the last bend and saw the shattered remains of the ork fort within the ill lit cavern. The fight had taken out many of the lights which kept the place shiny. No matter. Before Knuckles could shout into his door mounted squawky box, the bikers raced forward. Knuckles yelled after them anyway.

"Stomp'em boyz! Waaaaaaaaaaaaagh!"

The entire mob added their throated war cry to that of Knuckles' squawky box, which created screeching feedback with the Deff Dread's own, not that the orks cared. The mek boss pressed his face - gob notwithstanding - to the slit of his armored slit waiting for the good part to start. As soon as the bikers made for the lip of the cavern, humies bathed the entrance with broiling flames, setting the flesh of the speed freaks on fire. Knuckles guffawed loudly, smashing his metal shod fist on his dashboard with sheer glee. The bikers sped on and hit debris, sending their bodies and their quickly disintegrating rides into the air to crash further down on the humies lines. The brilliant pyrotechnics sent the orks into an awed frenzy and riders pressed the pedal to the metal, hurrying to meet their enemies.

Veritable sheets of lead poured from the hundreds of gunz welded to the ork vehicles. Ork accuracy was renowned for its loosey-goosey results but what the humies didn't understand was that the shootier the gun, and the gunnier the ride, the less accuracy mattered. The humie skorcha boyz were learning that lesson right now. The scrawny gits dropped or burst into flames as their fire tanks exploded. It sent shivers down Knuckles' spine.

Knuckles hollered into his squawky box. "Nails, hit'em with da krusha! Go long!" The looted tanks at the battlewagon's sides took the idea and ran with it. They elevated their cannons above the boyz and their buggies and lobbed shells into the scrap pile fort and its surroundings. With the battlewagon's powerful kannon, which blasted craters twenty meters wide, and the tight confines of the tunnel only offering the tank's front armor, there was little the humies could do.

Nonetheless, they didn't run. All the better thought Knuckles as he fought the urge to inch forward. A wave of boyz poured out of the speed tunnel and were shredded by overlapping fields of bolter fire. But in true orky fashion, the boyz and the buggies that now crashed explosively into the enemies' defenses had soaked up all the sneaky tricks the humies had to throw. A looted tank suddenly swerved on its tracks and charged into the disorganized fray beyond the tunnel's protection. Its commander threw the hatch back and climbed out onto the speeding battering ram to fire off his slugga. Knuckles shook his head, some orks just couldn't hold their waaagh!

It ended being for the best as a dozen burny balls shot from the humies' side and slagged most of the looted tank's orky armor, sending it crashing into the nearest wall to explode magnificently. It was lucky, because moments after the Deff Dread wobbled out of the tunnel and the humies had nothing to stop it then and there. The walker waded into the thick of it, massive skorchas blanketing a great part of the cave with billowing clouds of fire. Its large Buzz Saw cleared swathes of the humies in one fell swoop. Its other arm, a massive Kombat Klaw with powered sheers, destroyed any cover the poor sods had left standing. Knuckles figured he had the right of it, and the fight was going to be a short one. It was kind of disappointing. All that was left was to clear the tunnels of the humies, shovel the orky bits into the vats to accelerate their growth, and then … well, one thing at a time, thought Knuckles.

"Oie, Nails! Iz comin' up. Leave me sum shootin'da do!" The squawky box screeched as he shut it off and opened the side hatch of the driver's cab. Knuckles caught the tail end of Nails profusely agreeing with him. As fun as this was, Knuckles couldn't help but feel a nagging itch at the back of his head.

"Dat's right," the brute mumbled to himself as he climbed up to the Kanon's platform. "I needz ta get me a boss hat…"

-/-/-/-

The battle in the gallery was reaching a crescendo. The rogue trader and his companions were a few hundred of meters down the winding tunnels on their way to their objective, despite this the rumbling of the ork vehicles and their cacophonous roar could still be heard. Barr and his troopers were skulking ahead of the team, occasionally letting the crack of a few high powered las bolt clear the way. Most of the orks were busy throwing themselves at the Imperial guard. Only a few gretchins were running wild in the claustrophobic passages, and even fewer of their lumbering kin.

"How sure are we that this is going to work," asked Sola as she closed ranks with Sigs and adept Pollux.

"87.98%," responded the adept, though the question had been directed at Sigs. The scion was surprised at Pollux's assessment. Most of his plans usually found themselves around the fifty-fifty mark, to be honest.

"Let me rephrase, honored adept. How likely are we to survive this course of action, factoring in individual odds?"

Pollux didn't miss a beat. She never did. "Cross referencing prior battle reports and official career training, and with a confidence interval of 95%, the probabilities stand as follow; Barr 73.67%; Nius 68,56%; Ferraro 67.98%; Pennette 86.99%; Sigismund 52.11%; Remi 82.87%; Sola 34.56%; Pollux 59.87%."

Sigismund mumbled something, seemingly pleased with himself. "Hey, how is it Remi scored so high?"

"That's what you're worried about, Sigs? Not my 30% odds of survi-"

"34.56%," corrected the adept as they walked on in the dark passages, their electro torches the only source of illumination.

"Yes," Sola relented with a sigh of exasperation. "Thank you for the correction honored adept. The point is-"

"That you're not alone," smiled Sigismund, the way he always did to reassure the facto. "I know for a fact that Remi and I would die before anything happened to you. So in truth, your odds are more like… 50-"

The mechanicus adept chirped in her techna lingua angrily. "56.51%"

Sigismund nodded. "Which trust me, works out more often than you'd expect it to."

Sola was fighting a losing battle to control the twitch in her eye when Remi walked up behind her and laid an almost weightless hand on her shoulder. "Humanity is capable of amazing things in the name of survival. There is no amount of calculation which can define what a person can do when their back is against the wall." The Nostromo spoke with the confidence of experience.

"I disagree categorically, navigator. Given a sufficient amount of testable events anything can be rendered into numerical purity."

The hushed conversation was seemingly interminable, but then the companions exited into a grotto carved into the mountain rock. The gap was little more than ten meters wide and a few times that in depth. It was cluttered with crates, tools, and machines of blasphemous construction. Barr and his troopers were spread along cover, the sergeant knifing his hand through the air to signal Sigismund and his noncombatants where to hide. The electro torches were doused, thankfully the grotto was lit by work lights rigged to a spikey totem, wires sagging between it and the roughhewed walls. The temperature in the room was markedly hotter. Sola hid near large containers pressed against the mountain's rock. She hissed and pulled her hand away from the stone quickly, mouthing 'HOT' to her companions.

The sound of clanking and stomping was filling the room, followed by the bellowing of an angry ork.

"Come 'on, yas useless pilez junk! We're gonna be late to da fight!"

From the inky darkness beyond the light's reach came a squat orkish walkers, twice as tall as any man and shuddering on piston legs. They looked like jury rigged barrels covered in spikey bits and splashed with a generous amounts of red paint, strange jagged glyphs added in thick tar as an afterthought. As they stomped towards the hidden Imperials, the lights shone on their menagerie of lethal implements. The three walkers sported between them a heavy machine gun, a flame thrower, and some kind of projectile launcher attached to one side and buzzing saws, shears, and power claws on the others. Bringing the rear with a large sparking pole was a nob worthy of the name, large pylons sticking out of a backpack strapped to his back. The ork wore strange checkered armor plates bolted to a rubberized jumpsuit, fat grimy goggles strapped to his forehead. The rod spat blue sparks as he herded his creations towards the tunnel Sigs and his ilk had come from.

"Oie!" the brute yelled as one of the squat cans thrashed a row of boxes in its passage, "Dem my gubbin's yaz stupid grot! watch' it!" The mek boy nearly went berserk, smashing his prodding stick against the thick armor plates of the walker until it snapped. After which he drew a large hunk of junk, power capacitors wired into its frame lighting up and strobing disjointedly. The weapon, for no ork would slave lovingly to piece such a thing together without the potential for destruction, whined to a high pitch, but instead of discharging its content the mek started to slam it against the walker's trunk with even more gusto.

The grot pilot screeched through the squawky box wired into the metal shell, unaware of his invulnerability to the large ork's abuse.

"Youz lucky da pain boy bit it, so iz can't replace youz, or id rip ya outta dat killa kan an' use yaz to wipe my arse!" continued the mek boy.

As the greenskins worked out their issues, Sigismund and Barr exchanged silent gestures. The sergeant sighed with frustration, having to abandon his military cant to adopt Sigismund's intuitive style of charades. By the time the Mek and his creations were coming for them again a vague plan had been formed. Sigismund huddled close with Sola, Remi, and Pollux.

"Sola you're with me, we have to stop the walker with the burner from getting close enough to incinerate us all in one gout. I'll distract it while you fill it with bolt rounds, your rifle looks like it could manage that." The scion ignored his facto's glare, she obviously didn't not thing distracting a killing machine equipped with an industrial sheer and a flamethrower to be a viable idea. "Remi, try to keep your eyes on that nob, maybe we can get the upper hand on his machines if he's dealt with." Finally, the scion shifted his weight around to face the adept. "Pollux, don't get killed. You're the only one who can figure out how to actually flood the caves."

"Affirmative," Pollux said. Sola was sporting one of her passively furious expression as she slipped a bolt shell the length of her hand from her ammo pouch and manually fed it through her rifle's breech. Remi was easier to read, shrugging off his cowl, he simply stared at Sigs with an ornery scowl. The scion's plans were never well received.

From across the cave Barr was similarly huddled with his soldiers. Pennette leaned in. "So what's the plan exactly?"

"I have no gakking idea. Just improvise and stay out of the civvies' field of fire. Pennette you're with me. Nius, Ferarro, no heroics."

The pair of storm troopers smirked, Nius elbowing his partner. "Not winning Pen's heart today, huh?"

"What heart?" grumbled Ferarro.

Pennette flipped the boys off, then Barr gave the signal.

As one, the storm troopers rose from their cover and focused their fire on the first of the walkers. The beams from the hellguns scored angry red welts along the machine's armored plates. Before the greenskins realized what was happening, three increasingly coordinated volley of las fire converged and cut into the walker's chassis an inch at a time until finally roasting the grot within. Its torso plates were a mass of liquefied metal dripping to the stone ground in a hiss of exchanging heat. Having made their position glaringly obvious, the troopers broke up into pairs and moved to different cover. Pennette climbed on some crates and headed for the high ground, leaving Barr behind. She unlimbered a melta bomb, the ones the Guard had lent them for their operation. They would be needed to breach the mountain's natural lava shunts, but dead soldiers carried no missions. As long as Pennette was breathing, she knew there would always be a way to achieve mission success.

The ork mek was smarter than he looked. He quickly dropped behind the half melted walker. Its grot pilot still screamed as he cooked alive deep within its bowels, its active squawk box making that much obvious. The nob quickly ripped the vox off to make himself heard.

"Wut youz waitin' for ya gits, Get'em! Youz can't get stomped by scrawny humies no more!" The killa kans, as the mek had called them, were milling about in a panic until the mek boy reminded them of their post-grotic state. The two surviving kans turned about, their limited intellects already having forgotten their friend's ongoing torment, and charged forward with maddening glee, their lack of contact with the world having long ago robbed them of what little sanity they might have possessed. Equipment and orky building materials were flung into the air as they were barged aside, the killa kans closing in to do what their named suggested.

Sigismund burst from his hiding place, shrugging his storm coat from his shoulders to catch it in a flourish and wave it like a grox dueler performing in an arena. For all the ploy's obvious intent, the launcher armed walker drew a bead on the scion. Its tiny brain boiled at the sight of an easy target, and unleashed a storm of workshop shrapnel in Sigs' direction, sending him tumbling behind the closest available cover in a heap of limbs.

The machine with the flame thrower angled itself towards Sola, its premature weapon discharge obscuring the riflewoman's sight in a rippling sheet of fire. Sola was pulled back down into cover by Remi, and though the fire barely caressed the lip of the scrap box she sheltered behind, the heat of the flamer still singed her skin. She turned and thanked her savior, but he had somehow disappeared. She had no time to ponder how.

"SIGS!" yelled Sola.

The rogue trader recovered some of his poise as he locked eyes with Sola, immediately understanding her predicament. Behind her, adept Pollux had upturned a heavy crate with the help of her mechadendrites and used its hollowed center as a shelter for Sola and herself. A billowing cloud of fire rolled over their makeshift shell as the walker powered on towards them, their fate unsure.

Remi was nowhere to be seen.

Sigs' mind raced to the only conclusion he could think of. He counted the seconds until another heap of scrap was launched his way. He jumped from his cover catching the tail end of a shrapnel blast, one piece ricochet off his surroundings to score a cut below his right eye and ripped into the flesh of his cheek. The scion unsheathed his power blade in one fluid motion and launched himself into a roll between the arrhythmic piston legs of the scorching walker, blade slicing into the thick metal and severing hydraulic lines.

As Sigismund had hoped, the launcher armed walker turned its back on the storm troopers who capitalized on the opportunity. Nius poured suppressive fire onto the downed walker to contain the mek boy, who's hiding place sparked with arching electricity, while his partner hurried to clamp a melta bomb on the distracted walker. Barr was busy circling about to cut the cowering nob's cover and flank him. Meanwhile, Pennette was leaping off the ill stacked crates and using the live wires connected to the light system to traverse hand over hand towards more advantageous grounds.

Sigismund barely registered the bright flash of light and the washing thermal as a vital part of the launcher walker was vaporized, grot pilot with it. He was more concerned with his own dance partner, who by now had shuffled back on its hobbling legs to swing an industrial buzz saw at his head. The first few swipe were near misses, its awkward jerky motions telegraphing its intentions, but its ramshackle design injected a certain degree of randomness as its joints spun and reversed erratically.

Sigismund was thrown off balance by the latest swipe, which had chipped his carapace pauldron, and raised his power sword in a meek attempt to parry the incoming buzz saw. The power field of the blade melted the inferior saw alloy as they met, but the sheer momentum of the circular saw flung Sigismund's weapon out of his grasp. A fraction of a second later and the buzz saw flipped and rotated at the joint, coming back for a second run, much faster than Sigismund was able to dodge. As the walker's kill saw began to rend him in twain, a blurred silhouette careened into the scion and threw him out of death's embrace.

Loud, louder even than the detonation of melta bomb, or even the whoosh of promethium fed flame, came retribution resonating in the tight confines of the cave. Twice more the bark of an anti-material bolt rifle rang out. The first mass reactive shell collided with the flame walker's knee joint, blowing the last functioning leg's mechanism to smithereens. The second chewed a large crater into the killa kan's torso, sending sparks flying out, followed by some rank, discolored fluid. The third and last shell slammed into the walker's saw mounted arm, sending the lethal tool off in Sola's direction. The blade bounced off the facto's cover and nicked her thigh. Sola cried in pain as she dropped out of fight behind the cargo crates, blood welling quickly from her cut. Pollux stood behind her, scorched cover held above her with the help of her mechadendrites in case they needed another improvised shelter. Both women were sooth stained, but the adept seemed nonplussed about the near death experience. She crouched again to attend to Sola's wound, the box dropping over them like a protective shell, the darkness proving no obstacle of Pollux's augmented senses.

While the civilians were playing heroes, Barr pivoted from his hiding place to catch the mek boy dead in his sight, but the creature had disappeared, electric arcs dancing where he had been moments before.

"Nius, Ferarro, with me! Seek and destroy!" The troopers obeyed immediately knowing that hesitation meant death in a battle. As it were, they had lost track of the nob, which portended potential disaster. They split up and searched in combat formation, trusting Pennette to take care of the immobilized walker a dozen meters to their right. A strange shimmering blur caught Barr's eye, it was preceded by fat electric sparks and lightning trying to ground itself. The sergeant started to notice a pattern. A chase. Barr signaled his wingmen to pursue and left the void born and his retinue reap what they had sown.

Sigismund winced in pain as he clawed his way as far from the killa kan as he could. The machine was severely damaged, but it hobbled in place, vibrating as if ready to explode, and slowly turned towards him. Its flame thrower's pilot light flickering eagerly. The scion's gut was sliced open, the carapace shredded away. He struggled to move, but from the range of motion he could muster, he expected the cut to be shallow. He thanked the Emperor for small mercies, septicemia from spilled innards was far from the glorious end he had envisioned for himself. None the less a great deal of blood was pouring from his wound. He rolled onto his side and used and claw at his surroundings for leverage, resting his back against a generously greased mining machine. The gyrating tin can had finally moved enough to spread its girder-like arm, now able to catch Sigismund at the edge of its fiery spray.

A dark shape dropped, momentarily visible as the sparse lighting caught its fall. With a loud clank of metal on metal, the shape crouched low atop the walker long enough to do its work, then flung itself off the machine into a pile of wreckage.

The killa kan stopped for a moment and inclined its armored bucket strangely, as if trying to see what was even now humming menacingly. Before the grot pilot could figure it out, the melta bomb detonated, vaporizing everything in a perfectly traced radius, taking a quarter of the walker's head with it and leaving behind a gleaming metal edge or ruddy red. The monstrosity's metal bones groaned as heat dissipated, and moved no more, the pilot's truncated body sitting silently at its controls.

Sigismund released a shuddering breath as Pennette stomped out into the light, dusting herself of the residue she was covered in. She smiled brightly, tussling her cropped purple hair. "By the throne," she chuckled, "I love my job."

"Did we get them all?" grunted Sigismund from his uncomfortable position.

"Uhhhhh…" droned Pennette lifting her arms to indicate she was not sure.

They received their answer as a loud clap of displaced air made their ears pop. There, a few meters from them, the ork mek had suddenly appeared, as bewildered as the surprised pair. The ork had obviously been expecting this situation more than they and hefted his strange weapon in their direction. Pennette dived for cover. Sigismund groaned and covered his face with his arm, trying to put the less vital limb in the way of any incoming fire his head might receive. The ork's kustom blasta warbled, barked, fizzed, then crackled, and unleashed a torrent of solid slugs wreathed in intermittent flashes of energy beams and plasma flares. For all its wondrous assortment of death dealing options, the weapon, along with the mek boy, proved to have horrible aim. The inaccurate fire washed over most of the area but mostly missed Sigismund, a few flattened slugs and scorch marks covering his vambraces and grieves, further damaging his already chipped shoulder guard. The Emperor's providence had struck again, sparing Sigismund's mostly unarmored lower abdomen from any hits.

Barr and his fire team moved in for the kill, bracing the stock of their weapons into their shoulder, they fired on the move. Barr had paid close attention to the patterns of flashing lights and shimmering blurs. He had rightly guessed that the pursuit was coming back their way, having bounced around without rhyme or reason in the cave's few hundred squared meters. The three sent powerful spears of las fire hurtling into the nob, the smell of cooking ork flesh filling the air, along with the smell of its horrendous body odor and the ozone tinged air. Pennette recovered from her dive, weapon in hand, and added her fire with barely a second's delay.

The mek boy danced in place, alleviating the stinging pain of the humies' weapon by offering different body parts to aim at. His weapon continued to fire sporadically, the ork having never taken his finger off the trigger. The mek boy swatted in the general direction of his tormenters, spraying his surrounding ineffectively with gratuitous fire. Not too far from him, Sigs was mirroring the mek boy, face half covered by his arm, and shooting with his now unholstered bolt pistol at the ork. The weight of the fire proved to be enough, the nob dropping to the ground in gurgling complaints.

"Nah fair… iz wudda stomp' yaz all. Stomp' yaz good, realz good. If yaz didn' gank. Cause iz da meanest…meanest."

The blurred shape of Remi finally coalesced, his temporal manipulations finally at an end. He adjusted his robes, pulling at his sleeve with an air of arc annoyance. A few steps took him over to the gurgling greenskin. The storm troopers all trained their weapons on the greenskin, but none expected to need them. Near, the shuffling of a crate revealed adept Pollux, now helping Sola regain her feet, thigh wound sprayed with synth skin. A reckoning hung in the air.

"Iz wud of... stomp'…" the creature wallowed, too dumb to die. "Sizzle Guts' da biggest. Iz got orky know-wots. Yaz… yaz hears."

Remi slowly reached for his bandana, bruised light seeping through it with a foreboding evanescence. Those who knew better looked away, others were simply too curious not to record every moment of the navigator's power manifesting the warp. The mek, sensing its end, forced open a heavy lid to give Remi the stink eye. His large bulging orb threatening to pop out and assault the navigator. It was over in an instant.

The first thing to burst had been the ork's defiant eye.

"Alright then. Now that it's all over. Anyone care to give me a hand." Said Sigismund from his place on the floor.

-/-/-/-

The slobbering nob swathed three guardsmen away in one swing of his big choppa and made directly for Trevin. Its evil countenance left no doubt at what its intentions were for the humie boss. When it died, its brutal features softened for a moment as if unable to understand why its body no longer obeyed the will of the waaagh.

A seething blast of plasma disintegrated the majority of the nob's chest, the ghost of its passage marking the Brigadier-Colonel's sight. A few feet closer, or a few seconds later, and it would have been the end for Trevin. Thankfully, the whining charge of Melot's plasma gun had reached its readiness in the nick of time.

More of the greenskins climbed the scrap piles which littered the gallery floor from one end to the other. The push of their large walking monstrosity had given the orks the time they needed to break the Imperial lines with brutal melee charges and push the guardsmen nearly back to their point of entry. The field was lit with the fury of battle and the last few hanging spot lights which teetered to and fro. It was a scene born of nightmares. But Trevin and his companions had lived worst in the decade past. It was not them however on which victory depended, but the brave infantry men facing this nightmarish scene.

Colonel Brisbane had been pulled back to Trevin's position after suffering a gouging neck wound, it had taken two guardsmen and Brisbane's own field medic to drag the nearly exsanguinated officer from the front line. A commendable performance for all involved. Even now, Kirkguard and Steld, the two nearest medics, were working in tandem to seal the wound and transfuse the senior officer. Expanding foam was jammed into the colonel's cut, followed by a synthskin sealant. Steld, plastek vitae pouch cinched between her teeth, was letting gravity transfuse the patient as her hands deftly fetched the tools of her trade and examined Brisbane for any other wounds.

Captain Frost was holding the bottom of the scrap hill with the remains of her company. Circumstances had conspired to have all three command groups together. A single shell from that damnable canon still hiding on the other side of the tunnels could wipe the entire chain of command out. It was too late to worry about it now, the special weapons of the command squads were laying down devastating fire, which was the only reason the last line of defense was holding. It also had had the unfortunate effect of attracting all the greenskins to this exact spot, who howled and hooted to join in the fight.

Corvin knelt behind a girder which had fallen askew, bathing the slope with liquid fire and cleansing it of any ork eager enough to jump Captain Frost's barricade. The others provided support. Melot focused his plasma fire on the largest of the brutes. Lancer thinned the horde with his automatic grenade launcher. Finally, Trevin stood at attention with his inferno pistol and his power sword, waiting on any ork daring to threaten his comrades. The set-up was mirror by Brisbane's command squad half a dozen meters away, with the exception that the colonel was unable to fight. Brisbane had done plenty of that already, no one would begrudge him his absence, except perhaps himself.

The fight was loss. Trevin knew it. Though scores of greenskins lay dead on the gallery floor, the orks' willingness to use ordinance in such close quarters had given them their victory. Not for the first time, good men had died to grant others victory. Sigismund had better pull through, or he'd answer to a smoking inferno pistol.

"Gus," called Lancer, one hand cupped to his ear to focus on his headset. "Partial transmission from the camp. I can't make it out. But something's happening."

Trevin acknowledge his comms operator and aimed loosely at an ork boy scampering up the hill. The achingly bright lance of light thrummed and glided over the xenos. Flesh and bone charred, crumbled, and turned to ash before its owner tumbled backwards lifelessly. Inferno pistols had been designed to melt through tank armor. Not even an ork could survive such a lethal instrument, at least none but the biggest of orks.

Corvin cackled as a sheet of flame arched down onto the slope of the command unit's hill. That boy enjoyed his carnage too much. Melot let loose the power of a new born sun, taking another stubborn ork's head off before letting the gun's containment field expel flesh scalding steam from its calamity vents. He grabbed Trevin's arm with a worried expression and yelled something incoherent, which lost itself into the mayhem of the battle, and indicated the auxiliary passages on the ork's side of the gallery. Gangs of orks were running out of the tunnels in haphazard formations. The Kursk veteran had seen enough routed orks to tell the difference between a battle charge and a full retreat, though admittedly the differences were subtle.

"What's going on?" asked Trevin. He had a habit of thinking out loud, and knew no one had the time to spare him an answer. The cave rumbled again, loose pieces of scrap metal careening down the remains of the once orky fort. For a moment Trevin feared the orks were running away from one of their own mad inventions, something so terrible and so woeful to behold that the orks themselves feared its coming. His breath caught in his throat as his men's death cries echoed in his ears. A numbing shadow of cold fell over him.

The battle field was shifting. Shells exploded around the haggard defensive works the Guard occupied. The massive juggernaut of steel which had until now bombarded the Imperials' position slowly crept out of its tunnel, looted tanks at its side surging forward like a pack. It took a moment for Trevin to realize the shells were not being shot at his forces, but at the orks.

The tunnels stopped disgorging orks and instead spilled forth the familiar shapes of men. The darkness hid their heraldry, but the oaths they screamed were unmistakable. Guardsmen of the Persephonian 1st and 4th charged guns blazing, men who had braved the dark tunnels of the mountains without their chimeras or the safety of well dug-in artillery positions, men who had no business fighting orks in close quarters. But they had not come alone.

Leman Russ battle tanks churned the scrap piles to shred as they vaulted over the remains of the orkish defenses. Squadrons from the 5th's hussars burst out of the tunnel Trevin had been so pressed to hold, peeled off and filled the large confines of the gallery with the bolt fire of their sponsors and the thunder of their battle canons. They raced around the beleaguered Guardsmen of the 3rd, a river parting around an island of static defense, and engaged the confused greenskins, who soon joined their retreating kin. First amongst the reinforcements was Lord Commissar Otto, the only man with the authority to order this brash maneuver. He held his head high, wearing his faith like a cloak of adamantine as he rode into battle in an unbuttoned hatch. Otto flashed his lit power sword like a firebrand, red bionic eye eerily visible beneath his peaked cap, and exhorted his charges by example.

The Imperial armor exchanged fire with the looted tanks and crushed fleeing orks beneath their threads. The spectacle was humbling, powerful cannons tearing orkish ingenuity apart. Each barking discharge was the word of the Emperor, his wrath made manifest, stilling the heart of lesser men whose chest reverberated with its potency.

But even these magnificent armored steeds found their match in the orks' battlewagon. The beast took direct hits like an old pugilist. Its armor plates buckled and bent but its structural integrity held. The juggernaut gave as good as it got, if not more, its mounted canon obliterating two Leman Russ tanks and pummeling the infantry reinforcements back to their points of ingress. Dozens of gretchin scampered along its hull firing its big dakka dakka guns, skorchas, and scrap launchers. It was a moving fortress more than a tank.

The Guard's coordination won out in the end. After minutes of exchanging fire, the chortling beast crawled back into its hole, its escorts of looted tanks broiling across the gallery's length. Fiery wrecks filled the cave with light and choking fumes. With its infantry support abandoning it, the battlewagon's crew had no choice but to bail out as Trevin ordered all available fire on the aberration.

With a howl of mournful abandon, the mek boss relinquished his cherished creation to the Guard. But not without a last surprise. The battle worn guardsmen secured the gallery, pressing on to encircle the stationary fortress, wary of ambushes and devious tricks.

Proving once again that he was a Morky as he was Gorky, Knuckles had rightly anticipated his foes. The Guard's caution proved to be their undoing. The clock ticked just long enough to gather an audience.

With an explosion worthy of an ork's salt, the battlewagon detonated, taking most of the orkish speedway with it.

-/-/-/-

Sola and Sigismund were leaning against each other as they painstakingly made their way through the mountain's winding tunnels. Between the two of them, they managed a reasonable pace as Barr's fire team split the duties of guarding both the rear and the front. The use of the melta bombs fighting off the killa kans had been unfortunate but necessary. Fortunately, Pollux's near heretical tendency to improvise beyond mechanicus sanctioned rites had saved the day. The adept managed to use the ork's drilling equipment to rupture the mountain's naturally forming lava tubes. The result, although slow to begin with, would undoubtedly flood the lower tunnels as well as redirect the thermals the orks used to fuel their menagerie of incubators.

Between the bursting lava conduits and the battle being waged hundreds of meters away, the possibility of reaching anyone by vox was unlikely. Sigismund had not dare asked Pollux for a probability calculation for fear of resuscitating the cyclical debate they had so narrowly escape before their very lives were held in the balance. The scion knew that with Toth deployed so far way, an airborne extraction was out of the question anyway. Besides, Remi had an entirely different subject in mind.

"You realize this is entirely your fault. I hold you responsible for Sola's wound. You and your halfcocked plans."

"It worked, didn't it?" retorted the pained scion, still clutching at his gut despite the surgical stables holding his innards in.

"Not every plan you walk away from is a success, Sigs." Sola winced, trying to keep weight off her injured leg; all the while keeping Sigs from keeling over.

"Perhaps. But one where everyone walks away in addition to single handedly defeating an entire ork tribe sounds like success to me."

Sigs, ever the optimist, thought Sola. At least he was back to his old self.

"I'll remind the hundreds lying dead beneath our feet that this victory was single handedly won," muttered the Nostromo. "Not that I care. What's the point of the Guard if a few million of them don't die every once in a while. Still, the look on their face will be worth it."

Nius, who had been scouting ahead with Barr, returned in his usual combat grouch and held up his hand. "Sarg thinks a mob is heading our way. None too quiet those greenskins."

"Fine," sighed Remi. "I'll take care of it." The navigator walked pass Nius, somehow coming to the conclusion that the storm trooper's report was an admission of incompetence.

"I detect thirteen life forms," offered Pollux as she turned her attention inwards to her implanted augury systems. "Priority warning. One life form matches excessive mass parameters. Anomalous heat signature and metallic alloy detected. There is a 96.76% probability that the xenos is the ork leader."

"Gak," muttered the storm trooper. "I'm going to tell Ferraro and Pennette. You guys sit tight." With that, Nius fell into his crouch and moved down the tunnel, whose incline had steadily grown. They would be reaching the mountain's surface soon. A plateau probably. They could smell it in the air. The air was cooler, yet carried the scent of scorched wood from the earlier basilisk barrage.

Sola cursed and held up her bolt rifle with difficulty. Sigismund helped her with it so she could fetch a drill tipped bolt shell and slam it into the breach. "That's new," said Sigismund absently.

"I did my research Sigs, you should try that sometime. These specialized bolt shells have a delayed fuse. The bit will drill through armor and even, if my calculations are right, burry themselves deep enough to end a nob."

"Confirmed," added adept Pollux.

"Oh. Good," said Sigismund, less than convincingly.

Ahead, Barr had taken cover behind a small outcropping of rocks, hell gun aimed into the darkness of the intersection. Of all the tunnels to use on the way out, they had fallen on the popular one. Just their luck.

Remi softly let the sergeant know he was beside him with a touch of his gloved hand. It unsettled the soldier that the navigator could sneak up on him so easily. Barr hadn't even heard the rustling of his robes.

"Two o'clock," growled the storm trooper.

"I'm entirely aware sergeant, thank you." Remi's thanks were as sincere as a fox's mid-morning greetings to the inhabitants of a henhouse. "They are hard to miss."

A small party of gretchin walked out of the tunnel's darkness and into the pale daylight streaming from the exit behind Barr's position. They chittered nervously casting glances behind them with a strange mix of fear and audacity. Remi began to uncover his true eye when a frightfully familiar grumble made him pause.

"Oh no'z youz don't."

The very next moment, a flying grot came hurling at Remi's head from the inky shadows. The three foot tall, foul smelling imp latched on and clawed madly for purchase, seemingly more surprise than Remi at the turn of events. The Nostromo yelp indignantly and unleashed his warp eye, which bled madly into reality with its unholy light and ripped half of dozen gretchin souls from their burning bodies, including Scratchy McClawy Face.

Barr squeezed the trigger of his hell gun, firing a volley at the blocky silhouette abandoning the shadows. A nob wearing mega armor thundered towards the Nostromo, hell gun volley streaking his thick plates with rivulets of molten metal but failing to slow him down. With a massive back hand, Knuckles sent the navigator flying into the tunnel's wall, the scent of charred flesh and crackling ozone drifting from the power klaw. The Nostromo landed in a heap, unmoving.

The surviving gretchin ran around in circle, panic triggering their imperative to run and hide. Knuckles lifted his big shoota, strapped to his mega armor's gauntlet, and unleashed a storm of heavy caliber slugs at Barr, chewing up the surrounding stone and sending the pulverized dust into the air. The storm trooper dropped and curled into a ball to limit his profile, which most likely saved his life.

"Knuckles!" yelled Sigismund, who had moved up with Sola. She held the heavy bolt rifle in her hands with difficulty, testing her injury with a grim expression. "Stand down, buddy… there's no need to fight here."

The ork mek boss glared hatefully at the figure shambling into the light, his beady red eyes growing tenfold as he recognized the voice's owner. "Bo-?" the massive nob, made even more imposing by his orky power armor, paused and cast a glance around him. The swarm of gretchin was now long gone but for Nails, who looked on at his boss with supportive terror. The grot held a jagged piece of scrap in his hands like a shiv, his unwavering belief in his master's Gorkiness sustaining his uncharacteristic courage. Knuckles couldn't afford to lose face.

"Of 'course we needs ta fight," said the nob, finding his measure as he paced. "Dats wut orks do!" Knuckles clacked his combat klaw spastically, his distraction buying Barr enough time to slink away from the nob's immediate vicinity. "Youz nevar understood dat. Always getting' ina way. Always sayin' no. Always…always" the nob stopped his pacing.

Knuckles' thick drool splattered down from his metal gob, his eyes darting about with delayed realization. Meanwhile, the rest of Barr's fire team assembled behind Sigismund and his gun totting facto. A charged tension hung in the air.

"Wher'ez… wher'ez ur boss hat?"

Sola cursed. "Sigs! Brace!"

The scion immediately obeyed. He pivoted on his heel and slammed his back against Sola's. The facto raised her rifle, sighted, and fired. At such short range, she couldn't have missed.

Knuckles surged forward ready to cleave the pair with his power klaw, his momentum meeting that of the anti-material bolt shell. His iron gob took the brunt of it, the drill bolt piecing through the inches thick metal and lodging itself within the ork's thick jawbone before exploding. The ordinance ripped off the augmented jaw and most of the bone onto which it had been riveted. Knuckles' neck strained as his head was throw back, most of his lower jaw sailing past his eyes.

"SOLAaaa!" roared Knuckles as a ton's worth of orky flesh and bolt riven metal bounced off the stone walls. Huge furrows were carved into the stone, or simply gauged out as the mek boss clawed and grasped at everything he could in his mad tumble backwards.

Knuckles finally regained his balance a handful of meters outside the tunnel's exit. Barr ordered his fire team forward and wasted no time pummeling the nob with their hellguns. The troopers disappeared into the glare of the natural light beyond just as Knuckles began probing the holes in his face with metal shod fingers.

Sigismund quickly turned and wrapped his arms around Sola, who slid down against him after enduring the worst of the angelus rifle's recoil. The bandages on her thigh blossomed red again. What little mending had been done was pulverized by the shockwave coursing through her body.

"I will examine the navigator's state," Pollux said, choosing to maximize their post battle recovery. The adept knelt by the crumbled heap of Remi's body and examined him for signs of life, which she received when he objected at her touch, his pale hand flopping oddly to slap the adept's metal digits away.

Outside, the storm troopers were busy chasing Knuckles. By the sound of it, losing half of his face had not robbed him of his gusto. Sigismund would have to add tank killer rounds to his list of things an ork could survive.

"Good shot, Sola." The scion said.

The facto shivered. The blood loss she had suffered, and continued to suffer, was draining her of warmth. Sigismund laid Sola on the ground softly, pulling bandages from his combat harness and a multi-purpose auto-injector. It would balm her pain and stiffen her system against shock.

"You're lucky I was here to save you." The scion didn't respond to her jest. Sola looked up at him, and squeezed his arm as Sigismund began to adjust her bindings. "I'm sorry Sigs. He wasn't your Knuckles anymore. He wouldn't have listened. You know that, right?"

A painful snap echoed in the confines of the tunnel. "I'm fine, you dolt. Leave that alone. I'll heal fine without your meddling."

Sigismund ignored Remi's discomfort and smiled at Sola warmly. "I know. I was just buying you some time to shoot," the rogue trader lied. He tied her bandages and shifted with a pained growl, his own wounds disagreeing with his motions. Sola mentally filed this discussion for later and let herself relax as much as she could.

"Did they get him?" Sola asked.

"SOLAAAaaaaa!" The mountains echoed with Knuckle's furious roar, followed by the whip crack of las fire.

"I don't think so, no," mumbled Sigismund. "Maybe?"

Knuckles' bilious outbursts could still clearly be heard, slowly receding in the distance. Sigismund's attempt to downplay the possibility of a tank crushing nob going on a vengeance spree with Sola as the whining prize was strangely endearing.

"Sigs, I'm cold," the facto whispered faintly.

"I know," came the gentleman's reply. He shrugged his storm coat off, it's burned and tattered edge falling over her to offer what little succor it could. Sigismund bent low, brushing Sola's hair from her face, his eyes gleaming with the ghost of a rarely felt emotion. Uncertainty.

The scion bent further, warmth filling his stomach, and kissed Sola's lips softly.

The facto waited for the kiss to end. "Sigs?"

"Y-yeah?"

"You're bleeding," she said, a hint of breathlessness lingering in her words.

"So I am," Sigismund replied nonplussed. He wiped the blood staining his lips. Then proceeded to lose consciousness.

-/-/-/-

In the confusion of Knuckle's colorful escape, no eyes fell upon Nails. He quickly scrambled out of the shadows looking for the gruesome remains of his boss' iron gob, careful to remain as small as possible and twice as quiet. Nails hefted the heavy gob over one of his shoulders, small red pupils staying stuck on the humies as they huddled against each other, and spirited the gob away into the darkness of the intersecting tunnels. His muffled gibbering continued to echo off the roughhewed walls for quite some time after. Within his fevered pitch, all the fanatical urgency of a grot on a mission could be heard. Knuckles' iron gob had been retrieved, the orky relic secured. The boss would no doubt reward Nails, maybe even give him a shiny metal gob of his own. All the grot needed to do now was find his master.

All that stood between him and Knuckles was a mountain filled with dangerous and hostile inhabitants. On the bright side though, there was plenty of fresh meat laying around, with a little luck Nails could even manage to find himself some lunch.

To Nails, it sounded like just another day in a grot's life.


	13. Chapter 13

_**Into the Breach:**_

_**Part 13**_

The unlikely duo arrived at their destination unruffled. Chastity's mind had been filled with potential scenarios, none of which had come to pass. Their trek into the heart of the forest had been nothing but uneventful. The Eldar had not fled, Devros had not chased after him, and the young bodyguard had not foiled any shadowy assassination attempt against Elamnyl, as the xenos had come to introduce himself.

Once again, the young warrior felt the paranoid tinge of doubt tug at her mind. Her musings were interrupted by her companion's complaints.

"So where's this magic portal of yours Eldar? Nothing here but grass," grumbled the twist catcher. Devros tugged on the poly-mesh wire which tied the manacled xenos to his belt worn spool, a compromise between securing the prisoner and allowing the party to navigate the dense forest vegetation.

"Yonder, one-eye. The webway assembly is hidden," Elamnyl said. Despite the fatigue gnawing at his bones, the pathfinder had found his energy renewed the closer he found himself to freedom. The travel, though painfully slow at first, had allowed the pathfinder to recover from the ministration of the hateful ones. His escorts were of a different breed. Fearful of the unknown, like most beings, but experienced enough to substitute hate for wariness. He Eldar had been given food and water, as well as plentiful rest periods. Elamnyl's body was bruised, but his mind was finally returning to him.

"Let me check the glade first," offered Chastity, already walking into the open aired green space before even being acknowledged. The sunlight fell on the youth's shoulder like a warm caress, the scents and sounds around her those of a perfectly balanced ecosystem. It was soothing and energizing. If what she had heard about Ultra Primaris was true and the Eldar had engineered this world to mature into a paradise, then she grudgingly had to applaud their skill. Chastity surveyed the beauty of her surroundings, focusing on the task at hand, and marked the most likely ambush spots which could hide enemies. There were a handful she would have to keep an eye on. Chastity sighed as a realization dawned on her. This world see more fighting before this crisis was over, the Imperium had sacrificed millions for places far less idyllic before.

Devros and the pathfinder left the relative safety of the woods when Chastity gave the all clear signal.

"I don't like a wick of this," growled the bounty hunter as he watched the Eldar move ahead of him, straining at the end of his leash. "Who are you anyway? It's not every day the brass want a xenos returned in one piece. You a prince, or one of their witches?" Elamnyl ignored the disgust the humans reserved for psychic beings, letting his captor prod on. "Probably not, you'd have tried something by now."

"I am of very little worth to my people. Perhaps that is the point." Elamnyl leaned his head back, feeling the tender caress of the Maiden world on his tired features. The pathfinder didn't truly know why he was being spared, only that Farseer Caille had foreseen it. His suffering would serve the cause a thousand fold. He would be the instrument of Morag-Hai, and nudge the skein of fate in his kin's favor.

The three met at the heart of the glade.

"So," shrugged Chastity, "What now?"

"Only a free soul may enter the Webway, the assembly will not allow for any forced access. It is alive you see, it must desire to grant me passage." Elamnyl offered his hands to his keeper, who cursed in his thick dialect before releasing him.

"This better not be a trick leaf-eater, I'd hate to disappoint the missus by cracking your skull open."

A captor and a well behaved captive often grew to understand each other, the intimacy of their forced circumstances a catalyst. Chastity had heard of such a thing, though never in the course of a few hours. Nonetheless, the twist catcher and the Eldar seemed to respect each other, if only grudgingly.

"Though my time with your kind has cast a somber light, you and your companions have saved me from a horrid fate. You are my protectors in this saga. A measure of gratitude is in order." The Eldar rubbed his wrists to ease the ache and bowed. "Thank you."

Chastity flinched lightly. Again, the xenos offered such genuine candor.

"Don't get all soft on me now, Elamnyl. My people and yours will be at each other's throat in no time." Devros swung the rucksack from his back and flung it at the Eldar's feet. Inside were the contents the pathfinder had insisted they recover. The twist catcher understood the attachment a man had to the tools of his trade, but Elamnyl's affection for his rifle was downright fetishistic.

"My lady asks for one simple boon." Chastity retrieved a small coffret from her person. It was unremarkable in every way, and until very recently, had sat in Sola's crypto-vault aboard the _Semper Fidelis_. Within the hand size casing were nestled a dozen small stones brimming with inner luminescence. Soft hues of green, blues, and violets shimmered with the light of minuscule stars, frozen like galaxies in the void.

"Spirit stones," Elamnyl gasped. The psycho reactive crystals were all that stood between the terrible fate which awaited all Eldar. Without them, the souls of the departed would be devoured by She Who Thirsts. The inconspicuous jewelry box held within it a treasure trove of lost souls awaiting their transfer to the infinity circuit of Craftworld Biel-Tan.

"She hopes," continued the young warrior, "that you will return your honored dead to their rightful place and see her worthy of an audience with your people. That the horrors about to be committed in the name of this world might be averted." Chastity had memorized every word of Sola's message, every pause, every breath, knowing that this moment would seal the fate of millions.

Elamnyl took the coffret from Chastity's hands reverently and made no effort to hide the magnitude of his relief. His suffering had been indeed a cheap price to pay for this gift. He would have endured a hundred nights more had he known the lost would be returned to him.

"I will do everything in my power to convince my brothers and sisters to head your lady's words. You know not what miracle you have bestowed upon me. It will not be forgotten." Elamnyl cradled the coffret to his chest as he donned his robes, feeling whole as he cowled his features in his cloak. He kissed his finger tips and let them brush softly against Chastity's own, the human girl struck by the disturbingly intimate nature of Elamnyl's expression.

For Devros, the pathfinder cupped the spirit stone embedded in his ranger armor, softly nestled over his heart, in a silent salute. Having given his respects, the pathfinder turned towards the arching rune covered construct which appeared to phase into reality. A swirling disk of silvery energy manifested, nestled within its curve. As suddenly as the webway portal had appeared, Elamnyl vanished within its vortex. Moments after, the construct phased out of the visible spectrum of light.

"Not as unpleasant as he seems," Devros finally said, exchanging glances with the bodyguard. Chastity was still wordless, the Eldar contradicting all the assumptions she had learned about his filthy kind. Had it all been a trick, a deception? The xenos – Elamnyl – had been far from the soulless tormenter his kind reputedly were. Then again, he had admittedly been an outcast.

Just like Chastity, in her own way.

The twist catcher had already headed back into the bush when howling thermals blanketed the glade. Devros ducked quickly out of sight, instincts driving him to disappear in the surrounding vegetation. On the contrary, Chastity was foolishly looking upwards at the landing Valkyrie, the colors of Captain Falk covering its hull in bold strokes.

The young warrior shielded her gaze from the brilliant sunlight as the Fallschirmjager's debarked. For supposedly elite soldiers, they didn't see Chastity for the threat she posed, only for the petite girl standing before them. The lead trooper, in his tan and gold carapace armor, brandished a scroll case plastered with purity seals and tailing prayer strips. It certainly looked official. After the bodyguard had read its contents the pair exchanged words. Chastity shook her head and refused to cooperate further. She was then promptly escorted into the Valkyrie. Devros noticed the soldiers now held their weapons in tighter grips.

Devros raised his hood and began activating various devices on his harness and belt. His stummer muddled the sounds of his passage; his coolant-gel infused body glove helped foil preysense auguries; the scramble generator deflected motion detectors and other such auspex based systems. His harness rig held all those useful tools and more, and though their battery life were short, they would last him long enough to lose his potential pursuers. Many had called Devros' tricks ridiculous during his career, or likened it to a lack of skill, but those fools were long dead while the twist catcher was not. That was the bottom line.

Whatever was going on, one thing was clear. Their little clandestine dealings had been noticed, and hard questions were about to get asked.

-/-/-/-

A crisp looking non-commission officer barged into the small berth Sigismund and his people were using. If the scarred faced man felt threatened at the sudden brandishing of weapons, he did not show it. He threw a rucksack, which hit the ground with surprising weight, and focused on the bleary eyed scion.

"Everyone up and ready to go!" Barr and his people holstered their side arms as the regimental NCO carried on. "Brigadier-Colonel Trevin thanks you for your assistance concerning the ork infestation and cordially invites you to get the gak out of his bastion."

The storm troopers were already donning their kit when Sigismund finally shook the cobwebs from his eyes. "Were those his words, Sergeant Major, or yours?" If the scion had found Trevin a bit ideological and stiff, the Persephonian 1st's senior NCO was downright uncompromising in comparison. The two men had not exactly seen eye to eye since either.

"A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B, sir." Siggurd's words always came out chewed to death, therefore it was hard to tell when he was truly angry, instead of simply sounding it.

Sola, ever the diplomat, interrupted before Sigismund could make a mess of things. "Thank you sergeant." She dropped from the top bunk of the bed she shared with Sigismund, a little worse for wear after sleeping in her body glove. The weariness of the last 24 hours still weighting her down. "Has Lord Trevin informed you of the situation concerning our speedy departure?"

Siggurd nodded. "The Brigadier-Colonel has his hands full with matters which exceed your remit at the moment. The short of the long is this: The Lucius Dynasty has requested you be detained until your transfer to Lord Captain Falk for transit to the _Son of Ultramar_. It would seem that your interest with our xenos captive was too unorthodox to be ignored by the commissariat's reports."

Sigismund slipped his storm coat on very, very carefully. He made no sudden movement which could complicate his newly tended gut wound. "So what do we care what the commissariat say? Doesn't Trevin own their allegiance?"

"It doesn't work like that," Sola sighed as she helped Sigismund dress, her own injury well on its way to healing. "As political officers, their remit is to ensure the Imperial Guard's loyalty to the throne. As such, they can supersede the Guard's command structure." She gave the sleepy scion time to grasp her point, then simply expanded on it when his interest seem to wane. "And who do you think they would appeal to after the Brigadier-Colonel? Who, Sigs, is the foremost Imperial representative on Ultra Primaris?"

The scion moaned in jest. "I love it when you talk bureaucracy." Sigismund noticed Barr was going through the content of the rucksack the statuesque sergeant had dropped at their communal feet. Charge packs, plasma flasks, med kits and survival gear. It was quite a generous send-off package. "They called my father and told on me, I get it."

The sergeant major stepped aside and indicated the exit. "Your Aquila Lander is refueled and refitted. Your pilot was sleeping inside so he's ready to go too. I'll escort you."

The companions began their half hurried escape from the bastion. It was only a matter of time before the Brigadier-Colonel would have to order their confinement. Thankfully, he had sent a trusted, if somewhat unpleasant, underling to give them a head start. The Nostromo navigator followed in the wake of the storm troopers with adept Pollux, the only companion he knew for a fact would not engage him in idle talk.

Sola leaned in to whisper in Sigismund's ear. "We lost our advantage Sigs. They will trace every step we took and hunt us down."

"We didn't do anything wrong, Sola." As usual, Sigismund believed things would resolve themselves as easily as they always had for the dynastic scion. "I'll just tell them I decided to abscond with a few friends to blow some steam. It's not exactly out of my character to do so. No one will bat an eye"

"Damn it Sigs, take this seriously." Sola and the scion stepped out of the bastion's well lit interior, now facing a cool moon lit night. They were only a handful of meters away from the Lander's boarding ramp. Siggurd, his duties completed, walked away without further pleasantries. "They may give you a slap on the wrist, but for everyone else here, its treason!"

Sigismund straightened up, grasping the vice factotum's shoulders and locked eyes with her. "I will protect you Sola." The scion stroked the facto's cheek softly. "They will have to put my head on the chopping block to stop me. You're fate is mine."

The facto held back the sting of tears. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to let herself be protected by his shield, to allow herself the vulnerability that came with it. To trust.

But she couldn't.

"I'm sorry Sigs. Go back to your father. Tell him what you want. I'll disappear with the others." Sola gave Sigismund pleading eyes. "They chose to follow you, just like I did. To be loyal to you over the dynasty they served. I stole millions from your father. We broke dozens of regulations and undertook an unsanctioned military operation which undermined the Persephonian's loyalty to their patron. Don't you see Sigs? The Senatorum will see this as a threat, a challenge to your father, and they won't need to be right to send us to the gallows."

Sigismund shook his head. "Sola, don't. We work well together. We Need each other. Don't let them divide us."

"I'm sorry. Only you can win by going back. For me, it death. Either by firing squad, or a poisoned drink, or even by accident in my ablution chambers. They _will_ kill me." Just like they killed my family, Sola ached to say.

The scion parted his lips to protest, but Sola didn't allow him. She kissed him deeply. She kissed him hard. But mostly, she kissed him with all the desperation brought on by goodbyes. For the first time in decades, Sigismund was paralyzed by doubt and fear as he watched Sola climb the ramp of the Aquila Lander. The woman had a talent for slipping under his skin, for making him hesitate, and the clever girl knew exactly how to exploit it.

As the ramp closed and the turbines whined, Toth offered the befuddled scion a rough salute from his cockpit. Sigismund simply stood under the jets' downwash, wind whipping at his coat madly. His mind was locked, Sola's words reaping their toll. It wasn't until the gloved hand of a commissar turned him about that he realized he had been standing still, watching the craft disappear into the night sky, for quite some time. The vindictive smile on the political officer's face seemed misplaced, at least until Sigismund recognized who it belonged to.

-/-/-/-

To be summoned into the dynast's presence was a rare event. To be invited to his private residence, with its ancient architecture and its otherworldly appeal, even rarer. To speak frankly with the rogue trader patriarch was undreamt of, an event which his children could count on their fingers. For Evangeline, it was the first time. It only pained her that the subject of conversation was her brother's sanction. Anthonid, Lucretia, and Evangeline formed an uncomfortable triangle, sitting in a triclinium as somber and spartan as the dynast himself.

"It is Sigismund's gross misconduct which summons our attention now father." Lucretia sat stiffly on the sofa facing her father. "Surely you see this? We cannot have his whimsy threaten the Dynasty. This last of a long line of blunders, his eloping with Vice Factotum Villaneuva, proves this. His lust blinds him to her subversive intent."

The elderly man raised a hand to quiet his daughter's venom. "Siggy did little to threaten our dynasty my dear. Calm your humors." Anthonid reclined gracefully on his romani sofa. "Though this Villaneuva woman might be another matter entirely."

Evangeline, eyes darting from her father to her half-sister, felt a shiver run through her spine at Sola's mention. "The vice factotum as yet to be found guilty of anything worse than abandoning her station. Being that she is not a combat officer, even this breach of protocol is slight."

Lucretia rounded on her sister with fire in her eyes, fire which cooled to simmering coals at the sight of the young girl, her most important puppet. "The data coil you secured says otherwise Eva. It is filled with cyphers and vague code words. No one free of guilt records their daily notations so nebulously."

"We will know the truth of it soon enough," said Anthonid. Lucretia knew of what her father alluded and was wholly against her brother being allowed to spin his silver tongued lies.

"Father, I protest. We had to hunt him down, his accounts should be regarded as suspicion, if not downright as falsehood."

"He is a son of the Lucius Dynasty, Lucretia. Do you trust so little in the honor of our family name?" Anthonid sat up from his leisurely lounging. "Your brother's honor may have suffered grievous wounds, my daughter, but it is not yet dead."

Lucretia scoffed, her disdain for Sigismund's supposed honor apparent. Evangeline quickly cast her eyes over the finely sculpted statues whose marble filled the room's many alcoves. It was all she could do to hide the truth she had peeled from Hubert's diary. One she had shared with no one as of yet.

The large banded doors opened to the swaggering of Sigismund's entrance. He was once again clothed in the bright red colors of the Lucius Dynasty's officers, an affectation which he had not favored of late. It was a blatant gesture of repentance. For all Sigismund's flaws, he was a highborn void farer through and through, a son of the Lucius dynasty and its entrenched roots into the democratic ideals of Ultramar. He knew how to pander to his audience.

"I beg forgiveness for my tardiness. My stomach has been in disagreement with me of late." Even when adopting the rigid cadence of noble parlance, Sigismund demonstrated a debonair charm, one which was only slightly tarnished by his evident struggle to walk with a stiff back.

"Welcome back son, please, take a seat," Anthonid gestured to either sofas occupied by his sisters.

The scion visibly relaxed once he settled beside Evangeline, the strain of masking his injury melting away as he leaned against his sister in brotherly affection. Lucretia's folded hands never left her crossed legs, her stiff back holding her stately posture intact. No mean feat, considering the visceral impulse which screamed for Lucretia to launch herself at her hated sibling.

Evangeline and Sigismund's embrace was cut nastily short. "You have much to answer for Sigismund," said Lucretia with a surprising amount of restraint in her voice. It barely sounded like an accusation. Their father kept an eye on his children, and reclined once more, comfortable to adopt a monarch's aloofness while his retainers squabbled, if only to interject at his advantage.

"I apologize if my absence was problematic. Having been on board the _Son of Ultramar_ for so long, I decided to stretch my legs and visit the wonderful symbol of our dynasty's colonial aspirations-"

"Are you capable of nothing more than decei-" spat the captain of the _Chariot_.

"Enough Lucretia!" said Anthonid, offering an open palm to his son, a sign of his right to defend himself."

"Thank you, father."

Evangeline detected a tinge of tension in Sigismund's voice when he acknowledge their father. Had he also discovered what Hubert's diary claimed, of the bastard fathering of the Dynasty's scion. If so, did Sigismund believe it? His behavior had been erratic since Hubert's passing, perhaps more aggrieved than he should have been for the avuncular man. Evangeline began to count the suspects who might know of the dread secret, her attention straying from the conversation at hand.

"I've been enjoying my time in New Pariden. Have I caused distress? Was it my acquisition of an honor guard?"

Lucretia scoffed so vehemently Anthonid had to put an end to Sigismund's gratuitous posturing. "Certain details have come my attention, Siggy. Sola Villaneuva, your vice facto, has made some rather strange transaction approvals. Do you know anything about it?"

Sigismund shrugged, feigning ignorance. "I asked her to procure me a few things, perhaps?"

"I speak of transactions which have failed to be address with my factotum during their oversight session, transactions whose sum concerns several millions gelts. I only wish to ascertain that the funds have been put to the dynasty's good use." Anthonid locked eyes with his son and nodded softly. "And not simply embezzled."

"Sola Villanueva is a thorough facto, father. I trust her implicitly to fund my vacations and private consumptions."

Even Evangeline, the least skillful of the courtiers at work in the room, could tell Sigismund and their father had an agreement off the books. This conversation was just for show, a fact their sister clearly knew, and wouldn't stomach.

"What charlantry is this?" spat Lucretia, rising from her picture perfect pose. "Will we turn the other cheek to the point of snapping our own necks?" Anthonid called for calm, but Lucretia was incensed. "His acquisition of battle ready Aquila Lander; his liberation of a xenos which has yet to be returned to custody; his suspicious collaboration with the Persephonian army, whose leader he saved from Kursk; by the Emperor! The fact his pet ork is the cause for the infestation hundreds of loyal Imperial citizens died to quell?"

Her tone and stance was met by Anthonid, whose booming retort made the furious woman startle. "Enough of this childish bickering!"

Evangeline's attention was snapped back by her father's outburst, the first she had witness in her nearly twenty years of life. She unconsciously gripped for Sigismund's hand. Lucretia nearly faltered, eyes filled with righteous indignation, only to draw her half cloak over her pristine red naval uniform. She stood her ground.

"Childish? You think my concerns childish? While the heir of this dynasty whores and embezzles his inheritance, while he draws army and crews to his cult of personality instead of the lion of Ultramar, you accuse _me_ of…of bickering? You decrepit old fool. Have you lost all reason!?"

Sigismund rose, Evangeline in tow, and prepared to deflect the rage which possessed their father. The Lion had never been second guessed, never been so blatantly called to task, not even by his own children, not until now. No disrespect had ever been so personal, except perhaps the faithful day the Lion's brother-in-arms and closest confident had stolen his wife's heart.

Anthonid raised his hand to strike Lucretia down but found Sigismund between them. The dynast's gaze burned with fury and regret as Sigismund stared back with his mother's eyes. There, frozen in the moment, the lord and master of the flotilla was defeated the ghost of a memory. Before him stood Hubert, his naked flesh blunting the blow meant for Sieglinde, whose wild, fierce countenance promised retribution, even while her naked body beaded with the sweat of her infidelity.

"Emperor's blood!" spat the dynast as he startled from the vivid memory. "I curse the day I loved a ravenkin. Shades of her wrath, that's what you are!" Anthonid's reproach blanketed both of his eldest children, only to be drowned at the cusp of its apex.

Blaring sirens began to wail, filling the _Son of Ultramar_'s with a calls to arm. The watch officer's voice flooded from the ship-wide vox.

"Battle stations! All to battle stations! Guests are required to enter the sanctuary vaults. This is not a drill! All hands to battle stations!"

The actors froze midst drama as the weight of understanding settled upon them. There would be time to finish this feud, but only if the captains of the flotilla could be counted on to do their duty. Tense glances flitted between the aggrieved, slowly resolving before a greater threat. Lucretia was the first to turn on her heels and leave. Anthonid gathered his loose garbs around his chiton. Impassioned spite had no place in void warfare, but to completely disregard Lucretia's complaints would only widen the burgeoning a schism. Too often, victories had been soured at the heights of their achievement by resentful allies, turning to bitter defeat.

"I require a battle tested commander," said the patriarch, playing out his options mentally. "Our enemies, the Eldar, will no doubt use their trademark speed to strike, and as such will test us all." Anthonid turned to his children, his gaze a searing reminder of their duty. "You both know what is expected of you. Defend the Dynasty!" The Dynast had spoken, given his orders, and departed without casting his children a second glace.

Sigismund dragged Evangeline by the hand, leaving the Dynast's triclinium. If they hurried, they could make it to the lighter bay and board a shuttle for the _Semper Fidelis_. But if the Eldar had somehow made it past the picket ships and into volley range, then it wouldn't matter anyway. What would have been at best an hour before the first shots were fire would be little more than minutes.

"I understand what I have to do," said Evangeline as she jogged along her brother, who's every step seemed like agony. "You can command the _Semper Fidelis_, no one will stop you. You're the better captain, father knows it. We all know it."

"That's not what he meant," huffed the pained scion as they made it to a deck lift. He tried to catch his breath as they dropped down towards the midship lighter bays. "Father can't afford to be flippant about my command, not after Lucretia tore into him like that. 'A king rules through consent, not power,' remember that one?" Evangeline nodded, having been tutored from the same texts as generations of Lucius before her. "These kind of situations call for grand gestures. And you're it."

The young captain frowned, offering her half-brother some support as he panted breathlessly against the lift's wall. "What do you mean? This doesn't make sense. Father wouldn't gamble on all our lives just to make a point."

"Politics is war-" began Sigismund.

"And war is politics," finished Evangeline. "Defeat in one, is defeat in the other. I always hated those grand statements."

"Yeah," grinned the scion. "Me too."

"Sigs. I have to tell you… I, I found Hubert's diary in Sola's crypto vault." Evangeline bit her lip. "I haven't shown anyone else."

Sigismund reared up to his full height and stared at his little sister with his soft, doe brown eyes. The shadows of a terrible strife hid behind his piercing eyes, and stifled his response.

"Do you think father knows?" asked Evangeline as the lift stopped, opening up on the wide, pleasantly scented domed halls of the cruiser.

"It doesn't matter," said Sigismund as he took his first few steps towards the lighter bay. "It doesn't change who I am, who I love, or those I swore to protect."

Evangeline's heart skipped a beat as Sigismund stood silhouetted by the emergency glow globes. He was filled with a quiet confidence and sense of purpose the young captain dreamed of one day having.

"You coming, sis?" His smile was warm as he looked back at her, his hand casually waving her to his side. Evangeline knew then, that come hell or high water, she would follow him…

"To the ends of Terra, brother."

-/-/-/-

The Eldar feared a great many things, but none more than the vagaries of the warp and the creatures within. The seeds of a much faster means of travel had been planted for them long ago, and so it was no surprise when their intrusion came from a hidden webway gate. The Eldar fleet stalked from the thick ice field which hung like shimmering crystals between Ultra Primaris' moon, Syvva, and the system's midpoint. Their holographic cloaking carried them the rest of the way until, seemingly materializing out of the inky void surrounding them, they glided menacingly towards the Imperial invaders.

Thankfully, the vast expanses of the void meant that the sizable Eldar fleet was detected by the combined augury divinations of the rogue trader complement some thirty minutes before firing solutions could be drawn. The xenos could have attacked with their favored hit and run manoeuvers, but the rarely encountered dragon ships accompanying the fleet would have been left lagging behind. Rare was the Eldar who presented a conventional battle line, so rare in fact, that the keen tactical mind of the Lucius Dynast made note of it.

-/-/-/-

A fleet wide transmission baring the ident codes of the _Son of Ultramar_ flashed on Evangeline's console. Sigismund leaned in at her side. His appearance on the bridge had caused an awkward confusion, but when his younger sibling - and the rightful captain of the _Semper Fidelis_ – had taken the command throne, his textbook salute had cast all doubt aside. Lord Sigismund Lucius was here to support the captain of the warship and its crew, not command. But his mere presence brought out the best of the deck officers none the less.

"Dear comrades," Anthonid Lucius said in his rich, commanding tone. "As of this moment, the Imperial Guard regiments sworn to the defense of Ultra Primaris have officially opened engagements on all fronts. The cowardly Eldar think our colony unprepared. They will regret their mistake." The dynast paused for a breath, the rhythm of his address impeccably delivered, honed by over a century of stately affairs.

"Make no mistake, the Eldar are devious foe. But their fear cripples them. They hesitate when they should press forward. They flee when they should hold their ground. They attempt to bewilder and deceive because they cannot defeat a stronger foe. We are that foe! We, loyal subject of the Emperor. We, fearless few who delve into the darkest depth of the unknown. Heed my words comrades, and claim victory as yours!"

The transmission cut and was replaced by detailed battle orders for the rogue trader fleet. Evangeline scanned the surface of the scroll which was delivered to her throne. Her unsure expression prompted Sigismund to read the missive himself.

"Is this even possible?" asked Evangeline.

"It's not his usual tactics, but Anthonid is nothing if not flexible." Sigismund rolled the scroll back up. "It leaves the _Chariot_ in a dangerous position and puts our lives in the hands of that mad woman, Jenny Crimson and her _Stalker_. But I don't see how we are going to win against their numbers otherwise, and if we hang back and wait for their line to reach ours, their firepower will devastate us.'

"So his answer is to split our forces and let them encircle us?" retorted Evangeline quietly, as not to erode her crew's moral.

Sigismund smacked the rolled up scroll in his palm pensively. "The Eldar won't be able to resist the opportunity we will give them. Once the battle slips from their control, they will flee, or so Anthonid hopes. We can't let them dictate the flow of battle, we must startle the initiative from their hands."

Evangeline gripped the arms of the command throne tightly, her expression sour. "I don't like this plan."

Her brother laughed. "Then you're on the wrong ship. The _Semper Fidelis_ has always been the Dynasty's sword and the shield. It's our duty to take those blows."

"Still…" The young captain stood and folded her hands behind her back, she cleared her throat. "Master Ito, kindly bring her about to half thrust on my mark."

"Aye m'am," answered the master helmsman.

"Master Bargast, have the turbo batteries loaded and the torpedo prepped."

"Aye aye captain," replied the gruff master of ordinance.

"Master Keever," Evangeline called, the knightly officer turning to eye her. "Ensure no boarding party endanger the life of the ravenkin." Sigismund hid a smirk at his sister's blatant pandering, but few means made an impact on the feudal warlord other than the obvious ones.

"With my life, daughter of the hills." Keever ran metal shod finger across his console, preparing all hands on deck to repel invaders. Few things could muster his interest like ancestral loyalties, a fact Evangeline had come to understand during her time as sole commander of this vessel.

"Master Johnston, please focus auguries on the enemy frigates, I'm told their slippery. And inform Confessor Alabaster a battle hymn is in order."

"Immediately, captain!" said the bespectacled officer, who adjusted them eagerly and gave Eloquell, the mistress of the vox, her permission to proceed.

Sigismund approached his sister and squeezed her shoulder to relax the stiff, authoritative pose she seemed frozen in. "You sure got the hang of things while I was gone." He chuckled. "Who am I kidding, you had this boat in tighter order from the day you became my second-in-command."

"So," smiled the young officer, accepting her brother's praise. "Should we open with _splitting the triumvirate_?"

"The Emperor favors the bold," smirked the scion.

"Some days, Sigs," Evangeline said as she turned her attention to the command display, "I get to thinking his favor is not reserved for the bold, so much as for his favorite fool."

-/-/-/-

Void battles were like games of regicide. Each move subject to illumination dozens of minutes later. Impossible distances were crossed in a matter of hours, and ships fired at each other from distances greater than most worlds spanned, but the void was still achingly vast and empty. As such, the first meaningful shots of the engagement were fired by the _Semper fidelis_ turbo charged macrobatteries, but not before the Lion of Ultramar's first deception had set up the shot.

The dauntless class light cruiser had once been a warship, and though its bowels had been made prissier for the likes of Calaxian nobility, its massive plasteel bones were wrought for purpose. Leaving the _Boarson_ and the _Valhalla_ behind, both ill-suited for void battles and far too essential to Ultra Primaris' colonization efforts to be deployed on the front line, the _Son of Ultramar_ moved ahead at full. Its lumbering mass groaned on and presented its shovel faced prow to the Eldar fleet. The _Semper Fidelis _hung back to protect the non-combat ships of their rogue trader allies, or so it seemed.

Once the _Son of Ultramar_ was ripe for the picking, a squadron of Hellbore frigates peeled from the advancing Eldar line and surged for the kill. They weaved through the light cruiser's broadsides with detestable ease. Once they were convinced the ship was all but toothless, the lone hunters turned about with surprising grace and formed up for an attack run against the vulnerable rear of the Imperial vessel. Before they could reap their heavy toll, the first trap was sprung.

-/-/-/-

Anthonid Lucius stood at his command pulpit, the fulcrum of a half circle of such pulpits, each attended by his ship masters. All were garbed in the traditional long flowing togas of the Dynasty, each complimenting their meticulously oiled leather cuirass. The _Son of Ultramar_'s command deck was as symbolically designed as it was practical, the same classic architecture that decorated the dynast's retreat was found in its domed ceiling, its fluted pillars, and its circular tiled motifs. The far banks of the chamber was filled with servitors, each beautifully encased in the gleaming marble which filled the room. Ensigns and crewmen interacted with the servitor-statues and reported to the masters at their pulpits, not unlike the spokes surrounding the center of a wheel.

The holo-projector at the heart of the chamber flickered as the spherical battle map of the cruiser's surroundings disappeared to be replaced by the crests of the various ship in the fleet. The heraldry shifted and the sword crossed laurels of the _Semper Fidelis_ came to the fore. Anthonids' master of the vox fiddled with his pulpit and the machine communion was establish between the ancient ships.

"Now would be an opportune time to act," said Anthonid.

The youthful voice of Evangeline chimed back after a moment's delay, a mundane platitude when transmitting at such was distances.

"Acknowledge! In the name of the Dynasty!"

-/-/-/-

The _Semper Fidelis_ broke from its charges and powered on into the void. The Eldar ships were lithe and fast, easily outrunning Imperial vessels, it was this fact which had tempted the Eldar squadron to attack. But the old warship was far from your typical ship. Auxiliary power banks thrummed to excessive life and fed the _Semper Fidelis_' thrust converters. Impossibly, the Falchion class destroyer closed the distance at a ravenous rate. Still, thought the Eldar captains, the Hellbore frigates would have time to fire and sprint away, no danger was truly forthcoming. But the Eldar had been wrong again.

The Imperial warship's weapon battery tracked and established fleeting combat locks on its targets, carefully describing a trajectory which would spare their allies' stern. Despite the holographic cloaks which foiled most auspex system, and the extreme range of their batteries, the _Semper Fidelis_' combined the skill of its veteran crew with gratuitous fire to achieve the improbable. At a hundred and twenty thousand kilometers of distance, the mars pattern turbo batteries fired with incredible accuracy, dissuading the Eldar from poaching the _Son of Ultramar_.

One of the Hellbore frigates exploded, a better result than the crew of the _Semper Fidelis_ had hoped for. The wraithbone hulls of the Eldar ships depended on their cloaking systems to make all but the luckiest of blows possible. Consequently, the enemy ships were frail in comparison to the Imperial iron-clads.

Shocked by the loss of their wingman, the two surviving enemy frigates peeled away, but the _Semper Fidelis'_ approach forced them into the hands of their ally, and Anthonid had prepared another spectacle for his enemies. The Hellbores shot by the _Son of Ultramar's_ flank, dodging more broadside fire, only to end their flighty maneuvers in the sights of the light cruiser's tremendous bombardment cannons. Originally designed to lay waste to cities from orbit, the squat three barrel canon was now unleashing mass-explosive macro shell in the general space the Hellbore occupied. It mattered not that the Eldar ships appeared to occupy dozens of different coordinates on the cruiser's auspex, or that targeting was all but impractical without overwhelming fire, an area covering a thousand kilometers squared was engulf in titanic explosions.

Only debris flew out of the blast radius. First blood to the Imperium.

The Eldar had underestimated these mon-keigh rogues for the last time. They would pit their grace and power against the human's guile and see whose mastery of void fare was superior. The cumbersome _Son of Ultramar_ turned tail, a slow and ponderous maneuver which left it vulnerable to an Eldar surge. A surge which wasted no time in manifesting. The three large dragon ships swam forward, their strange liquid grace disturbingly out of place in the empty void, along with their two remaining frigate squadrons.

It was time for the _Semper fidelis_ to ride its momentum and give its slower ally, and the Lord Dynast aboard, time to return to a better position amongst its allies. The shield of the dynasty shot pass the still turning pleasure cruiser like a spear aimed at the heavens. A squadron of lighter, faster Shadowhunters peeled off to the flank, waiting for their opportunity to score a kill, while the squadron's twin bore down onto the heedless charge of the _Semper Fidelis_. This time, the Eldar were not lining themselves up for a shot. They were limber and evasive, which when combined with their holographic cloak, meant that the Imperial warship's superior range and layered fire failed to inflict a single hit.

In response, at the forty thousand kilometer mark, the trio of Shadowhunter unleashed a hail of brilliant starcannon cluster fire. The burst of livid laser fire taxed the Imperial ship's Castelan void shields and managed to collapse the overlapping defense measure. The last of the starcannon fire pelted into the _Semper Fidelis' _heavily armored prow. Entire decks bled oxygen and crewmen into the void as great furrows scored along the old warhorse's hull were torn by the issuing exchange of fire.

-/-/-/-

The command crew was thrown forward, the Eldar fire arresting some of the _Semper Fidelis'_ immensurable momentum. Alarm klaxons shrieked as vital systems overloaded and exploded. The massive plasma core sent stuttering pulses of energy through the warship's cabled arteries, taxed by the sudden reconfiguration of its output. The world turned to smoke and sparking consoles.

Evangeline was hoisted from the floor where she had lain, having been thrown bodily from the command throne. Her head spun, making her flail for something with which to steady herself. Officers yelled fire containment protocols, or for their subordinates to respond. Finally, the young captain's senses stopped reeling and she realized Sigismund had forced her onto her throne. His one free hand clutched at his bowels, a dark sheet of crimson soaking his uniform.

"Eva, can you hear me, Eva!"

"Yes, yes I can. I'm ok. I'm fine. Status report!"

Sigismund crumbled at the command thrones side, bloody finger tips smearing the cool brass metal of its arms. It was a credit to the crew's discipline that they were recovering so fast. Master Bargest was clutching his console and yelling out his report. Master Johnston was pressing his face to his vid screen and doing the same, blood running from his scalp, his spectacles nowhere in sight. Mistress Eloquell was collating a damage report from the lower decks and Master Keever was already at Sigismund's side. Slowly but surely, her chair's system began to project the annotated reports to her overhead vid screen.

The infernus master Mika and his ratings were battling three separate blazes on the starboard side batteries. Ribella's armsmen were helping casualties to Chief Surgeon Magda's med bay. A rupture in the sump decks had released a handful of dark hold mutants into the laundry deck, but without the twist catcher who had disappeared days ago, nothing could be done. Evangeline ignored all these secondary concerns and focused on the primary systems. Weapons, engines, vitae recyclers, thrusters, all good barring the starboard batteries' atmospheric breach and the overloaded void shields. All just superficial damage.

"Omnissiac congregator!" called Evangeline.

"Yes?" buzzed the techpriest, batting at the hem of his robe, which sported a modest blaze.

"I need the Enginseer Prime to give the shields all he's got. From now until we are blown to pieces, the Castellan system is his top priority!"

"I shall also inform Drive Master Tesslin, his expertise will prove invaluable" added adept Leitchwig.

"We… need to get those frigates off us," gasped Sigismund as he was helped onto his feet by the Raven knight at his side. "We won't survive another hit like that."

"Agreed," said Evangeline as she tensed in her seat. They had very few options available to them. "I wouldn't mind a suggestion."

"When all else fail," said the scion through blood speckled teeth. "Attack."

Evangeline rapidly navigated her status reports. The macrobatteries were still in the process of being reloaded after their last pitiful volley. Only one weapon system was at the ready, though Evangeline wasn't sure what good it would do them.

"It's time to see if the Emperor still finds you amusing Sigs."

-/-/-/-

The macro batteries having failed to make their mark, the crew of the _Semper Fidelis_ resorted to a maneuver of decidedly unorthodox origin. The Imperial ship armed its plasma torpedoes with a perilously short fuse and launched them the Eldar ships. The torpedoes raced towards the Shadowhunters and detonated moments before point defense turrets could shoot it down. Little damage to the enemy squadron resulted, but the Shadowhunters were forced out of their firing trajectory, which spared the _Semper Fidelis_ the precious few minutes it needed to reinitialize its void shields, only to have them overload a second time as a tide of plasma fire swept over its bristling hull. By the Emperor's grace, the _Semper Fidelis_ cut through the sphere of expanding plasma and emerged relatively unharmed. Better maneuvers had been attempted in the past, but survival was always a success in itself.

The Eldar attack squadron was scattered and lost precious time reforming into a cohesive combat unit, time used by the retreating _Son of Ultramar_ to describe another lumbering arc, presenting its more defensible flank again and using its body to shield its vulnerable allies. For the shield of the Dynasty, matters were entirely different. Void shields down, and powering on towards the trio of dragon ships by virtue of its breakneck momentum, the _Semper Fidelis_ struggled to come to a new heading. The xenos cruisers, each with the firepower of the squadron which had nearly shredded the Imperial warship to pieces, unleash their unforgiving barrage on a target a fourth of their size. Incredulously, the dragon ships also fired their keel mounted torpedoes, whose ordinance spread widely, like a net linked by a dozen warheads.

Pummeled mercilessly, the _Semper Fidelis_ lisped into an uncontrolled yawn. Power failures wracked the ship, lit decks flickering from their uncertain power source. Crewmembers died in their thousands as deck after deck blew out, were breached, or were simply consumed in secondary fires set ablaze by the massive lasers rocking the ship. All available power was re-rooted by the priest attendants of the plasma core and channeled towards the protective shields which stuttered to life moments before a last enemy salvo overpowered it. The last of the Castelan's system fried from its duress, but it had saved the _Semper Fidelis_ from its fate for a few more minutes. Breathes were held as the torpedo spread passed the stricken warship, revealing the _Son of Ultramar_ as its intended target, nearly two hundred thousand kilometers further.

Floating dead in the void, a tomb of ferrocrete and plasteel, the warship awaited its end. Across the embattled void, the Eldar frigate squadrons were swooping in for a pincer maneuver. On the void side, the _Son of Ultramar_ stubbornly suffered their stings across its thick flanks. While from the planet side, the wide flanking enemy squadron finally darted in for the kill, firing at the vulnerable transports huddled together for protection. Only a masterful ploy could save the beleaguered Imperial fleet now. Only a ploy combining decades of naval warfare with a near heretical familiarity with its foe. A ploy the likes of which the Lion of Ultramar had carefully orchestrated.

-/-/-/-

The vox channel to the _Son of Ultramar_ garbled into being. From the controlled panic in the background, it was clear the cruiser was talking a harrowing amount of fire. The senior officer were simply better suited to endure the enemy barrage without getting distracted. It was a trait that Lucretia admired in any crew, but her simmering bitterness made her cruelly pleased at the misfortune of her father's position.

"Ready yourself _Chariot_, the enemy will play its hand soon. You are to continue running silent until the very last moment. Your Jovian missile pods will only get one volley, no more."

"I am very well aware of the limits of my command father. She has been mine to captain for half a century!" Lucretia's bile was clear to hear, a fact her own command crew were uncomfortable hearing. In the dark, with the bare minimum of systems sustaining life on the hibernating transport, hints of disharmony amongst the dynastic bloodline was an ill omen.

"_Chariot_ out!" Lucretia's vox officer reluctantly closed the link to the _Son of Ultramar_, guilty for having to participate in the intended slight against the Lord Dynast. The captain returned to her throne, crossing her long legs. The creek of her leather knee-high boots was deafening in the silence. Despite the tense nature of her orders, which would see the _Chariot_ fire in defense for only the third time in Lucretia's career, the captain's mind could not help but wander.

Deep within the transport's bowels, a disgraced virgin guard was being held in the brigs. Had the stubborn child relinquished her misguided loyalty to Sigismund and his bitch, Lucretia could have provided their liege-father with the proof required to strike him from the bloodline. The child warrior no doubt possessed knowledge of the wayward scion's plot. Treason was an offense punishable by death or exile, both of which served Lucretia's ends well enough.

Perhaps, if Lucretia was lucky enough, the _Semper Fidelis_ would be loss with all hands on board.

-/-/-/-

The trap was sprung in tandem. While the _Boarson_ fired its port and dorsal macrobatteries, the _Valhalla _fired its prow's Mezoa lance battery. Explosive shells the size of buildings filled the incoming trajectory of the Shadowhunters, forcing them to roll aside. The Eldar had learned their lesson however, and gracefully dipped out of the firing arc of the defiant-class carrier ship. The bell tolled as the xenos squadron began to wreathe the intervening _Valhalla_ with precision laser fire. Its void shield crackled at the onslaught and imploded, explosions rippling along the array projectors. The Eldar fire melted craters into the launch bay shutters, which had closed at the first sight of the xenos fleet. Before more fire could be brought to bear against the carrier ship, the _Chariot_ dropped its empyrean mantle.

Too late the Eldar frigates detected the signature of the transport, whose obfuscation had been successful. Heat bafflers, auspex mirrors, and gravitational disrupters, which normally assured the _Chariot_'s escape from danger were now used to disrupt the Eldar manoeuver. Now committed to their attack run, the xenos cloaking technology failed to displace their ships convincingly. In a flurry of released warheads, Jovian missiles batteries fired in one massive salvo. The missiles saturated the immediate surroundings of one of the Shadowhunters, weak but plentiful explosions cratering its hull, and sent the Eldar ship fleeing out of weapon range. Its companions broke their attack and covered the escape of their damaged squadron mate. The batteries of the now retaliating reserve ships chased the Shadowhunters until they disappeared out of auspex range.

While surprising, the planet side flank had not changed the tide of battle. That honor remained firmly in the grasp of Lord Captain Crimson's _Stalker_. 'Mad Jenny' made her move, slinking from the cover of Ultra Primaris' moon, shadowfield clouding her in impenetrable darkness. The Meritech shrike-class raider angled for a surprising target. The diminutive ship slashed across the dragon ships now exposed rears. Its prow and dorsal mounted Pyros melta canons unleashed their fiery hell at the surprised cruisers.

-/-/-/-

The crew of the _Stalker_ hooted and cheered as they hit their unsuspecting victims. Jenny Crimson jumped out of her command throne and punched the empty air.

"Faster you curs. Fire all batteries!" ordered the woman. The captain reached up and lifted her large, feathered tricorne and ran her fingers in the long auburn locks beneath. She was bursting with energy as she gripped the railing of her cupola. Jewelry from a hundred different worlds, a good few xenos, decorated her ribbed corset and the length of her short taffeta coat. 'Mad Jenny' was fond of shiny baubles.

A haggard man turned to her, eyes lingering on the curve of her heaving breast as she leaned over the railing to scream more instructions. "She's firing as fast as she'll go captain. At this rate we'll run on empty before the Eldar shoot us to pieces!"

"I don't care mister Narl!" Captain Crimson met the scurvy sailor's eyes and smirked with her plump painted lips. "Whip your gang crews to my liking or I'll shove you in the next available breach!"

The crew jeered at the possibility of another battlefield demotion and continued on with their tasks. An infectious buzz of maddening glee filled the chamber as Crimson's scum endeavor to follow their captain's fast firing orders. The men and women of her ship were criminals marked for death, one and all. Murderers, rapists, and blasphemers rubbed shoulders with narco peddlers, jury-riggers, and queue hoppers. It all depended on the world whose laws they had infringed, some decidedly more eclectic than others. Retrieved from the penal worlds which overflowed with their kind, Mad Jenny gave them one choice. Serve her in pillaging the Koronus Expanse, or get ready to be served to the Imperial death machine. Most naturally leaned towards her employ. Some, having heard of her fame long before being sent to death row, chose a clean death.

"It's now or never, you filthy half brains!" The captain raised her lace glove hand. "On my mark!

-/-/-/-

Eight macrocannons fired their melta-tipped warheads into the wraith bone ships. The _Stalker_'s crew put everything it had into firing its weapons, unleashing an envious rate of fire. It sliced behind the enemy lines to hit at their largest, most dangerous gunships despite the size disparity. The dragon ships shifted their heading, their coming-to speed twice what a ship of such tonnage should be able to achieve, and fired their keel mounted torpedo tubes.

The _Stalker_ survived her brush with death thanks to her xeno-cloaking system, the very same the Eldar's dark kin employed. The dragon ships' torpedoes overshot the raider as it continued to cut a swath into their blind angle. By the time the cruisers had turned about, 'Mad Jenny' was already racing in the opposite direction towards the _Semper Fidelis_. The _Stalker_'s job had not been to destroy the massive cruisers, little but the entire might of the rogue trader fleet could have achieved that. But the few melta warheads which had found purchase within the hull of the great warships would be setting the interior decks alight in flame.

Next to explosive decompression, fire was the void farer's greatest blight. On a ship with nowhere to go and even fewer options, crew men had been known to sacrifice themselves to quench a fire. Anthonid had known however that Eldar ships were far less crewed than Imperial ones. This little known fact, uninteresting to most, had motivated this part of his battle plan. Without adequate numbers, a fire would either spread out of control or distract the crew long enough to affect their combat effectiveness.

His gambit had paid off.

The planet side flanking attack had been foiled, and the Eldar were retreating to their lines with their tails between their legs. The _Son of Ultramar_ had weathered the blows rained upon it by the remaining frigate squadron, landing a few of its own, and even now pressed on to rescue the stricken _Semper Fidelis_. But between father and son was a swarm of torpedoes. If the _Son of Ultramar_ took evasive manoeuvers, the dragon ships risked having time to recover. They would then most likely destroy the _Semper Fidelis_ and rob a possible counter attack of any impetus. If on the other hand the light cruiser pressed on, it risked destruction.

-/-/-/-

"But an estimate of four plasma warheads will detonate if we hold the course Lord Dynast," the Master of the Helm retorted. Each and every master was not only a senior officer on the ship, but also by the same virtue a member of the Senatorum. Traditionally, officers moved up the ranks of the flotilla until serving with the Lord Dynast on his flag ship. It was the pinnacle of an officer's career, unless you had Lucius blood coursing through your veins that is. As such, the senior officers of the _Son of Ultramar_ were often considered as the 'inner circle' of the senatorum, and the hesitation in the eyes of the masters had all the pretense of an emergency session being called.

Perhaps Anthonid had indulged in too many of the senatorum's whims in the last few decades. Perhaps he had been exceedingly successful in convincing his underlings of their power over his decisions. Whether it was his guile, or their folly, which inspired this sudden hesitation to follow his orders, the Dynast would have none of it. Had the lines blurred so much that his officers believed themselves the sovereigns instead of the advisors? Was Lucretia's defiance spreading?

"Master of the Helm, you have been a valued servant of the Dynasty for many years. Fewer have guided my ship with such grace or skill. But if you fail to execute my order for even a moment longer, I will execute you instead. Understood?"

The Master of the Helm nodded, mouth agape. Few yet living had tasted the iron of the Lion's threats. The senior officers were stunned, unsure as to how to proceed, other than how the Lord Dynast instructed, that is. Anthonid smiled, showing a great many pearly teeth. He began to feel the commander he had once been rise to the fore. Young, bold, and impossible to placate. The man Sieglinde had once fancied.

"Head to these coordinates, full ahead, and issue a brace order to all noncombat personnel." Anthonid plotted a course on his pulpit's green tinted vid screen and sent the data to his blanched Master of the Helm. What the officer saw nearly made him faint.

"Now, let's go get my son, shall we?"

-/-/-/-

It was in moments like this that a Rogue Trader earned his warrant of trade. The _Son of Ultramar_ powered on. Its bombardment cannons attempted to clear the path directly ahead with its detonating shells. Its point defense turrets filled the surrounding void in tracer fire, a mass the likes of which would have shredded dozens of boarding ships. But these weren't manned crafts, these were cloaked plasma torpedoes, enough to guarantee a hit on anything within a twenty thousand kilometer square range.

When the torpedo spread fired by the dragon ships finally detected the _Son of Ultramar_, the explosion was like the birth of a new sun, and a plasma cloud billowed and engulfed the cruiser in all consuming fire. The void shield valiantly stood against the tide but were soon cast aside. Every inch of the millennia old cruiser felt the touch of plasma vapors before spearing out of the brilliant sphere of expanded gas. Only seconds had passed, but nearly a third of the _Son of Ultramar_ reported severe-to-crippling damage.

Still the cruiser powered on. It rode the pillars its engines disgorged pass the_ Stalker_, pass the _Semper Fidelis_, and ever onwards towards the very teeth of the Eldar fleet. Canons meant to flatten worlds into submission roared for the first time in centuries. They roared in the anger of a warship too long denied its calling. And its word was frightful to behold.

Eldar cruisers only now regaining full function, vulnerably showing their unarmed flanks, shook as the void around them shuddered with the rage of a hundred conquered worlds. At eighty thousand kilometers, the blasts rocked the ships' bones. At forty thousand kilometers, many of their organically grown decks collapsed in shambles. And finally, before the dragon ships could bring to bear their starcannons and halt the suicidal charge of the old warship, they learned why Imperial prows were made of sterner stuff.

Having pummeled the lead dragon ship into submission, the _Son of Ultramar_ reserved its ire for its neighbor, smashing into the delicate off-white shell of the wraith bone ship. In one final charge, worthy of legend, the _Son of Ultramar_ critically damaged two cruisers of equal tonnage to its own. The Eldar knew they could not win against an enemy mad enough to discard his own survival. When the human's reserves began lumbering towards the Eldar fleet, they knew the mon-keigh would see them dead even at the expense of their own lives. Even if a million humans died, and they all would before the day was done, the loss of Eldar life would not balance the scales. The Eldar had achieved what they set out to do. It was time to leave.

As the Eldar fleet disengaged, the Imperials rallied to rescue their comrades. The tally was skewed. Casualties aboard the _Semper Fidelis _and the _Son of Ultramar_ were many, and the ships would be anchored for repair for months, if not years. In contrast, the Eldar had lost three small destroyers, and received light damage on two other frigates, in addition to the crippling damages inflicted on the dragon ships. If the destruction of the trespassers was truly the goal of this engagement, then the Eldar simply needed to reform and ready a second attack. It was quite possible the xenos possessed fresh reserves, and if so, then there would be very little the Rogue Traders could do to stop them. The balance sheet seemed to favor the Eldar, despite the defenders turning a sure defeat into a crippling victory.

But every battle sowed the seeds of sorrows yet discovered, and the Dynasty was about to be rocked to its very foundation.


	14. Chapter 14

_**Into the Breach:**_

_**Part 14**_

The battle was under way. The shuddering of the _Chariot_ as it fired its missiles told the young girl as much. Chastity knew what had to be done. Her mistress often obsessed about every detail, playing every possible angle in her brilliant mind. It was this formidable foresight which now found its expression in the bodyguard.

Guarded yet unobserved, Chastity listened to make sure her captors were patrolling the brig. The soft hum of their power armor and the relentless pace of their ceramite shod boots announced them candidly, if you knew how to listen. The young bodyguard reddened with self-consciousness, a few months ago she had been certain of her righteous service. She had been assured that her training as a life ward was impregnable. She, like her sister now, had not known how susceptible they were.

The Virgin Guard were no fools, but they were unyielding. Centuries of dogmatic service had assured the inevitable existence of flaws in their methods, flaws which because of their isolation aboard the _Chariot_ had never come to be known or tested. But they would be today. Sola had gambled that the only woman capable of exploiting these flaws would one day find herself again in the very heart of the floating fortress.

Chastity began to peal the body glove from her flesh. Weak magnets inlayed in the suit's fingertips allowed hidden seems to be parted with a soft stroke of her digits. Freeing a soft milky shoulder from the rubberized material, she searched for her means of escape.

Sola had insisted on certain contingencies. Confused at first, Chastity had undergone the training. Tutored by a nameless man with cold, soulless eyes, she had learned to make her body supple through dance. She had learned to adopt entire new personas through theatrical exercises. She had learned to appease, or fool, machine spirits of various kinds. But more importantly, now that Chastity understood what Sola wanted from her, she had learned to kill swiftly and silently.

Chastity's fingertips snagged on the invisible edge of the ivory colored skin implant, peeling the soft gel patch and separating the film which inhibited its effect. Slapping it back into place, the young girl quickly sealed her body glove anew and waited for the terrible sensation she knew would come. She breathed deeply, and focused on her mistress' words.

_"Lucretia used you and abandoned you, or so she would have us believe. You had no choice but to cling to me, and I to shelter you." Sola had stroked the young warrior's hair, like a mother comforting her child before throwing it into the darkness against her wish. "Lucretia knows us well, which means you're use to her is not over. She will delve into you to learn of our plans again, this time to finish what she started. But her mistake was trying the same trick twice."_

Chastity began to feel the drugs effect. She groaned softly at first, then threw herself onto the floor of her cell. She gagged and wretched, spilled the meager content of her stomach. Shivers and spasms rippled over her lithe figure. The sound of heavy footsteps hurried to her cell.

_ "Lucretia won't listen to reason. Her hate for Sigismund is too deep. Her cruelty far too deeply ingrained. But there is another who might. One who has lent her authority to this witch hunt. When Lucretia takes you, and she will, it will be to the _Chariot_."_

The sound of slides being racked heralded the guards' arrival, and readiness to use their weapons if the need arose. It mattered not that Chastity had been raised with them as one of their sisters; that they had trained and aspired to the same things; that they had shed tears of anxious joy when one of their sisters bled for the first time, leaving the folds of the neophytes to be accepted as a virgin guard, or should their strength and purity be questioned, discarded to the lesser offices of the _Chariot_.

Chastity was now the exile, the reviled, the first virgin guard to have been excised from the order in living memory. They hated and feared what she represented. Most of all, they feared what she might be capable of. They were right to suspect her intentions…

_"Only you can reach the Lady Dynast's sanctum. Only you, Chastity, will be able to confront Lady Zenobia. Then, you will do what must be done."_

…

Chastity slowly returned to the living. Her breath was shallow, her head swam, and her hearing was garbled and strangely layered. She felt lost beneath the waves, the panic threatening to devour all that she was. No amount of theoretical explanation could have prepared her for the sensation; for the urgent clawing of a soul struggling to free itself from the abyss. Mortis, the alchemical concoction which had given her the appearance of false death, had nearly finished the job. Slowly, her body's humors stabilized.

It was the cold that struck her first, after the initial disorientation that is. She was cold - freezing in fact- her naked body lying on a metal observation table. It appeared that the drug had worked only too well. Soft tones caught her attention, they were rising in pitch and speed. Chastity pulled at the soft linen shroud which covered her and sat up groggily.

She was in the _Chariot's_ empty mortuary chamber, where the dead were temporarily stored between voyages, still attached to a portable vitae surveyor. It called urgently as her returning vitality was detected. The young operative's confusion slowly burned away as she traced her fingers over her body, noticing the efforts which had been deployed to revive her from her false death. Her chest felt bruised, ribs and sternum aching dully. Patches of flesh had also been scored by electrical discharges, leaving the flesh reddened and thick.

Chastity's reflexes took over as she ripped the sensor nodes off her naked flesh. In a swift motion, she disembarked from the observation table and silenced the overacting vitae system. The girl's mind raced to understand why the medicae equipment was still on hand despite her location. The sound of large swinging doors squealed on their hinges in answer.

An auxiliary walked into the mortuary chamber carrying an assortment of equipment. It appeared the medicae adept had intended to void the contents of her corpse. Chastity was a creature of instinct and conditioned reflexes, he mind still lagging behind her body. An urgent need to silence the unsuspecting adept flourished within her.

Before the auxiliary could ponder why the body of the dead girl was giving her a dirty look, Chastity burst into motion. The revenant slammed her knuckled into the auxiliary's throat, coaxing a muted garble from her victim, and quickly forced the auxiliary to the floor. The adept cupped her injured throat, letting her equipment clatter to the ground, unable to deter her attacker. Chastity continued to apply pressure around the auxiliary's neck in a parody of a lover's embrace until, finally, sleep released the panicked medicae.

When the struggle ended, Chastity caught her breath and released her foe. Strangely disjointed thoughts finally caught up with her. She was in the morgue being readied for storage. The ship was still and its deck thrummed with muted power. No alarm rang, no wounded flooded the medicae deck.

The battle had ended, and with little harm to the _Chariot_, it seemed. Which meant at least a few hours had passed. Lucretia would be intent on visiting her again after the battle reports were issued. Chastity had to hurry. The youth scrutinized the unconscious auxiliary and quickly began to undress the girl.

Thankfully, the _Chariot's_ all female crew made it simple for Chastity to acquire clothing, even though it was the rather conspicuous garbs of a medical deck attendant. It would do nicely for the moment however. It was a quick and graceless process, but the ends justified the means. Once Chastity was clothed, albeit in rather loose vestments which emphasized certain attributes the operative did not possess, she pulled the auxiliary onto the examination table and covered her in the linen shroud.

As an afterthought, the newly risen Chastity ignited a few of the overhead lumens, hoping it would provide the unconscious girl some warmth.

Chastity would have only a few minutes before her victim regained consciousness, only a few brief moments to get as much distance as she could between her and the medical deck, and hopefully, find someone with more reasonable measurements.

…

After borrowing a rating's dirty laundry, Chastity faced her first obstacle. The Tenebro-Maze was designed to counter boarding parties. For this, it was cleverly wrought. The engine core, warp core, weapon batteries, barracks, command decks, and of course the hidden sanctuary, were all located in counter intuitive sections of the ship. In essence, things were not where they were expected to be, and getting anywhere was a convoluted and potentially lethal affair.

But the _Chariot_ was home to Chastity, she had grown up running along its winding tunnels. No, the maze itself was not her challenge, its murder-servitors were. As expected, the auxiliary had regained consciousness and by the time everything had been cleared up, it was obvious that an intruder was loose within the ship. Alarm klaxon were filling the byways with obnoxious whines and the Virgin Guard were out in force sweeping every nook and cranny of the ship.

The murder servitors, those machines of iron and flesh, whose only imperative was to kill, and whose arsenal made such a thing trivial, were awoken. Long asleep in their hidden alcove, they were set free to prowl the maze with senses far beyond human. Only the Virgin Guard, whose power armors sent impossibly complex stream of identity codes, were safe from the ravening power claws of the killing machines. Not even trusted voidsmen would survive if they were foolish enough to disregard the alarms and wander out of their quarters.

It would not suffice for Chastity to crawl in the hidden spaces between the decks, nor to travel through the maintenance pathways. The murder-servitors had never failed to find their prey. They were relentless, unfaltering, and perfect in every way.

Except one, though the flaw did not rest in their construction, but rather in their masters.

The murder-servitors were repelled by the patrolling Virgin Guards. They would sweep ahead and behind the patrols, and while their senses could not be fooled, those of their masters could.

Chastity, in an act of supreme faith, shadowed her would be killers. Four of her sisters walked down the winding corridors and holographic bulk wards of the Tenebro-Maze. Bolt gun at the ready with merciless intent, they hunted for the woman who shadowed them. Chastity balanced on the knife's edge, creeping behind the virgin guards, her footsteps masked by their heavy stomping. Too close and the virgin guards would riddle her with mass-reactive shells. Too far, and she would be shredded to pieces by the murder-servitors. In an ironic twist, the winding and convoluted corridors of the _Chariot_ allowed Chastity to accomplish the impossible, and navigate between the two forces undetected. Not for the first time, Chastity thanked the Emperor that the _Chariot_ had few straight corridors.

Chastity pressed herself against a bulkhead support, waiting as her one time sisters searched a chamber beyond her sight. The young girl smelled the tang of ozone in the air and stiffened. Not ten meters from where she had come, a murder-servitor lingered at the threshold of the corridor. What little could be seen of its grey, lifeless flesh was covered in thick armor plates, its limbs amputated and replaced by wicked similes of barbed claws. Its black, razor sharp blades of iron were wreathed in power fields, crackling as the servitor scanned the junction with its augmented sight and implanted auguries. One more turn of its head and it would see her.

The virgin guards called to each other. The chamber was clear. They continued on their patrol with the sound of a heavy door sliding close. Chastity quickly slipped along the edge of the bulk head and disappeared from sight. The servitor scanned the corridor where she had been moments before, detecting an anomalous heat source. It made to pursue, lurching forward with scything claws, but its volitor implants filled its dead pain receptors with agony. The anomaly was within the vicinity of an active salvation signal. The murder-servitor bucked on its leash, auto-injection systems filling its body with chemicals to subdue its ingrained bloodlust. The struggle ended as the condemned serial killer, now a bound murder-tool, drooled thick chemical laced foam and stood down.

Chastity knelt and listened, her heart beat thundering in her breast. The servitor was silent as the grave. She held her breath, knowing her death could fall upon her in an instant. When she heard its footsteps moving away, Chastity exhaled in relief. Soon she would come upon the junction she had so painstakingly made her way towards. The rating she had visited had not been chosen at random. The voidsman –in this case woman- had been one of the lay artificers responsible from checking on the artificial sea's massive pipework. Now in possession of the artificer's cognomen identification rod and its sanctioned access, she could put in play the last of her gambits.

Chastity peeled off from the patrol's heels and disappeared behind a wall projection to arrive at the maintenance portal. The archway was sealed by a thick plasteel gate, a small alcove to its side holding a lectern with an embedded skull. One of its ocular recesses glinted with machine inlays.

With hands still shivering from her brush with death, Chastity slipped the identification rod into place. Access was sanctioned, but also recorded. It was an odd time to access the maintenance area and the suspicious activity would be noticed in short order. The machine spirit would inform the bridge, and the bridge would inform Lucretia, she in turn would send the Virgin Guard. The die had been cast. The next few minutes would bring this chase to an end. Chastity only hoped her mission would succeed, before the hammer inevitably fell.

-/-/-/-

"We have reason to believe the intruder is a viable threat to your safety my lady. But do not be alarmed, we will lay down our lives if needs be. She will never reach your sight!"

The virgin guard hammered a fist to her breastplate. The Lady Dynast nodded in gratitude and watched the warrior leave. Zenobia would have feared for her life once, but her existence had been too long to shy from death now. It was someone else's safety that came first and foremost to her worried mind. The signs had been everywhere. Battle had been joined. The ship had lulled strangely. The hull had shuddered from hurried manoeuvers and weapon discharge. The virgin guard, hours after, still anxiously scrutinizing ever blade of grass in the sanctum.

It brought great shame to Zenobia. To be hidden away at the heart of a fortress while her only daughter raced towards death. Was this truly the madness of her husband at work? To send a child, her child, to the sacrificial altar of the dynasty.

The Lady Dynast roamed through her villa, finding herself once more at the sea's edge. The artifice always brought her peace. The illusion was the only seemingly natural part of a life which had been utterly destroyed by the virtue of her one time beauty. How she mourned the day she left the hills of Kalka to wed the lord beyond the stars; a life she spent chirping in a gilded cage, a womb defiled by the needs of a dynasty; a dynasty which had poisoned her heart; a dynasty which had taken away her angel at the tender age of eight.

Zenobia clutched her robes, fighting back her bitter tears. If Evangeline died today, the dynasty would fall with her, in bloodied, fiery tatters. This she swore.

-/-/-/-

Chastity burst from the sea's surface gasping for air. The false currents dragged her back below the waves, yet still she fought. Her lungs ached, deprived of life giving oxygen since the daring plunge into the salination tanks. Death had chased Chastity as the girl tumbled through the massive pipes, turbine blades lazily missing the opportunity to cleave her in half. Still, death screeched as the pumps spat the operative into the sanctum's artificial sea.

Head over heel, with no notion of where the surface was, panic clawed at Chastity's discipline. The girl let herself float, letting the artificial gravity determine her fate, until finally grasping which way would bring her to the surface. When finally she parted the waves, minutes had passed and her head was heavy from oxygen starvation. Still she fought the waves, until collapsing on the white beach of the false sea.

It took far longer than she would have wished to recover from her gambit, too long in fact. By the time Chastity's vision had cleared and her heart raced a little less, she had been discovered, by the Lady Dynast no less.

Long engrained conditioning surfaced and Chastity scrambled to kneel, head bowed, gaze locked on the Lady's sandaled feet.

"I had not expected my assassin to be so polite," The Lady Dynast remarked. Chastity broke the protocol that had been hammered into her brain and looked up to meet Zenobia's eyes. They were clouded with grief and anger, yet all together empty of accusation. "I know you." Said Zenobia. "What they said was true, betrayed by one sworn to defend me."

Chastity rose to her feet, guiltily holding the gaze of her one time mistress. "It's not exactly like that. It's… complicated."

"I would assume so. Betrayal and murder are rarely as simple as we expect. If you could so easily stamp on your oaths, or take the life of an unarmed person, then I would worry for your soul." Zenobia was nonplussed about the possibility of her death. It was an admirable way to conduct one's self. Whether it was madness or strength which inspired the behavior was debatable however. But Chastity believed it was the latter. It was this faith in the Lady Dynasty which swayed the scales.

"I haven't come to kill you Lady Dynast. I have come to beg your help…"

…

The Virgin Guard had witnessed things which it had believed impossible just yesterday. A sister had fallen from grace. The very same fallen had outwitted defenses which had kept Lady Dynasts safe for millennia. And now, most incongruent of all, the Lady Dynast was sharing honey and nectar with her would be assassin.

It had not taken long for the bodyguards to fall upon the beach with fury in their eyes. The pipework which had been sabotaged to gain access to the false sea had been found. The intruder had been clever enough to choose a point of entry which ran after the pumps proper and most of the lethal mechanism in between. Needless to say, the guards had informed the few companions still within the sanctum. By the time the companions found the intruder, she was having a chat with their mistress by the beach side, still dripping from head to toe.

The matter would have been closed then and there if not for the generosity of the Lady Dynast. Her word was, after all, second only to the Lord Dynast. In truth, the centuries of shared traditions and fierce devotion had revealed otherwise. The Virgin Guard knew that should the day come, they would stand beside their mistress no matter the cost.

And so, a dozen power armored fanatics now watched over the strangest of occurrences as Zenobia and Chastity shared a meal.

"Grave accusations my child, Lucretia has been nothing but loyal, in actions anyway. Though I do not doubt for a second she would see her brother dead." Zenobia dipped a soft flat bred in a shared plate of honey and spices and ate it gracefully. "The raven kin of the black woods have forever been cruel and mischievous in my experience."

Chastity sat uncomfortably on the chair across from Zenobia, eating in the Lady Dynast's presence was an unfathomable honor. "I assure you my Lady. I have been with Sigismund and Sola during their efforts to save the citizens of Ultra Primaris. There is no plot to kill the dynast, or to usurp his throne. Only Lucretia believes it to be so." The girl paused for a moment trying to explain what she knew deep down. Zenobia was listening intently, politely waiting for Chastity to find her words.

"If anything, Sigismund would find it too boring and Sola would dread the trouble he would get into…"

Zenobia smiled, a memory long forgotten returning to life. "I met him once, Sigismund. At my wedding. He was younger than, full of promise and life. He had just recently inherited his command. I couldn't help but imagine what kind of husband he would have been. Instead, I was wedded to an older, constantly scowling version of him." The Lady Dynast laughed candidly. Some would have seen it as a slur, but none here. "Nearly half a century later and the only man I have been allowed to see is my husband, and he stopped visiting years ago." The Lady Dynast waned melancholic, "thankfully my daughter will not suffer such a fate, if she yet survives."

"She does," said Chastity, surprised at her own certitude. "Sigismund won't allow himself to die as long as people depend on him. Right now, captain Evangeline and the crew of the _Semper Fidelis_ need him most, with the exception of lady Villaneuva, perhaps."

"His sister says differently. She often claims that he would see Evangeline eliminated to insure he remained in command of his warship."

Chasity shook her head vigorously as she tucked a folded piece of bred in her mouth, her still wet hair whipping about. "Untrue, my Lady. The scion and the Vice Factotum are very fond of her. Has Evangeline not said so herself."

Zenobia smiled sadly. "The Lord Dynast discourages any of his heirs to visit their mother. He believes it complicates and exuberates conflict between his children, seeing that they share different mothers. I haven't seen Evangeline in nearly a decade, but for the odd messages and pictures." Light softly bloomed in the mother's eyes. "She tells me she is very busy and that the _Semper Fidelis_ needs her. How Sigismund teases her and how she keeps the ship in one piece whenever he runs off. How she looks forward to attending the senatorum as a senator by virtue of her captaincy. She is full of life in her letters. I wish her to remain so."

Chastity was at the edge of her seat, her heart bleeding for the regal queen. "Let me swear you an oath my lady, and I will insure your wishes be granted."

The Lady Dynast shook her head and leaned forward to take the young warrior's hand. "No oaths can survive the passage of time my dear. I can see that the path set before you will leave you little room for honor or oaths. Be true to yourself, or oaths will leave you bitter and childless."

The exchange was interrupted as Lucretia walked into the hearth chamber. "You!" she spat venomously as she saw Chastity. She immediately turned to the virgin guards in attendance. "Arrest her at once and return her to the brig."

"I think not. Chastity is my gues-" began the Lady Dynast as Lucretia's ire rose.

"This is my ship! And I command the assassin restrained!"

The virgin guards took offense at the captain's tone and turned their menacing visage towards her, the lifeless masks of their helms pinning her in place with their eerie stares. The Lady Dynast slowly rose from her seat, folding the long train of robes into her arms, and walked to Lucretia. All eyes were on Zenobia as she faced the captain, her servants anxiously easing fingers onto triggers.

"Correction captain. This is my ship, promised to me upon my nuptial night, only to be returned to the dynasty upon my passing. And as I am still amongst the living, Chastity can no more be my assassin than you can own my ship." The bile which Lucretia swallowed was visible to see. What the Lady Dynast claimed was true. But it was also subject to change.

Lucretia simmered down, her spite burning like soft coals. She straightened her uniform and gazed at every single person in the room before turning her stare upon the woman who had made their relationship painfully obvious for all to see. Lucretia would be no one's coach driver.

"You may retain the ownership of your ship, but its crew belongs to the Dynasty. Without them, The _Chariot_ will become your tomb." Lucretia reached for the scroll case at her hip and pulled out a communication scroll. "A situation you will find difficult to appeal as a dowager!"

-/-/-/-

As thrilling as battles tended to be, the debriefings were a loathsome necessity. At times they were more immediate and pressing, while at others, they were mere formalities. This meetings was definitely part of the former category. As Sigismund was wheeled into captain Boarson's commercia chamber –a room befitting a man who would name a ship after himself- the assembled Rogue Traders fell upon him.

"Is it true," bellowed the giant whose ship they were guests, "is the Lion dead?" Boarson was odd, as rogue traders tended to be, seeming more like a factorum gang chief than a man with a fortune at his fingertips. Having never met him, or captain Falk for that matter, Sigismund was taken aback by the directness of the question. Captain Crimson on the other hand, Sigismund knew too well, and her painted lips curled into a smirk that was quite out of place at the moment.

"My father is in stasis at the moment. His valiant rescue of the _Semper Fidelis_ was costly, especially to his bridge, but thank you for inquiring on his health." The servitor which pushed the comfortable reclining wheeled sofa installed its master at the wide table decorating the pompadour like negotiation chamber. "But his life remains in the balance."

"Look lad, I understand your position. It's a salty thing to swallow, a father's death, but we're here for the money. How's it all looking?" The brisk man was enviably forward, But Sigismund's mood was fouled by a many great things. Still, this was it. If matters weren't properly concluded the entire endeavor of colonizing Ultra Primaris would fail and the Eldar would win.

"Indeed," added Falk, his tan and gold carapace armor bedecked in medals. "I can sympathize with the difficulties of keeping a dynasty together, especially one as old and as celebrated as the house of Lucius, but Anthonid kept us in the dark on most matter; need to know basis. So I have to ask, are we still viable?"

The nerve wracking laughter of Jenny Crimson robbed the other rogue traders of their stern inquiry. "You lot are bastards through and through." The outlaw ran a painted fingernail along the edge of her mismatching tricorne, purity seals and litany strips trailing along its rim in satirical contrast to the rest of her provocative outfit. "Sigismund's old man is holding on to his leathery hide in a stasis chamber, all but dead, and you moan about your Throne Gelts. Ball-less curs!"

Falk, stiffening in the way the servants of the Astra Militarum tended to do, was ready to issue a challenge when the burly Boarson pulled him back by his gilded pauldrons. Sigismund had to act quickly, he couldn't afford to let their differences widen the chasm his father's absence had caused.

"Thank you jenny, you're very thoughtful, in your own way. But the lords are right. We were brought together by business and business should be concluded first. We can all mourn for our lost crewmen after."

Jenny rolled her shoulders and relinquished her taunting. The lords exchanged reticent looks of agreement and turned to face Sigismund.

"My aeronautical forces are in constant deployment to assist the Imperial Guard," complained Falk. "And my Fallschirm troopers are coming back in ribbons. I've already lost a company's worth of men in addition to two vultures and a Valkyrie."

"And I'm running out of raw materials." The giant folded his arms over his chest, his hairy forearms matching his bushy beard. "This place was supposed to have been free of xenos. Now our supplies lines are cut and there's a fleet out there waiting for us to slip up. We're easy prey and the one man with the acumen to get us out is in a coma."

Sigismund nodded, everything they said was true, even the scion couldn't match his father's sheer tactical expertise. The only captain with a viable chance to cut and run was Crimson, and strangely, she hadn't pointed it out yet, which meant there was something she wanted. Something she hadn't asked for yet.

"What of the Imperial Navy?" asked Falk, a fundamentalist to the core. "Your father promised them a refueling station. They have a stake in reinforcing us. Could they be counted on?"

"Keep your maypole in your britches medal man." It was obvious Crimson had far less love for the eternal institutions of the Imperium. "Lord Admiral Horne won't risk his precious ships to help us. There's a reason the Imperium wants us out in the fringes. It's why we are who we are, we take the risks the Emperor wont."

"Blasphemy!" bellowed Falk, reaching for his plasma pistol. Boarson stopped him again, this time getting between the two bickering rogue traders.

"Enough of your heresies, you skeevy little tavern wench. This is my ship and I won't have you take the Emperor's name in vain." The giant kept his hands outstretched until Falk dusted his pauldrons in a show of dismissal and Crimson tipped her hat mockingly. "That said, we shouldn't expect the Navy's help. One whiff of that Eldar fleet and the battle fleet will turn tail, sure as rain. They barely have a subsector's worth of ships for the entire expanse."

"Well gentleman, it seems we are in an impasse." Sigismund paused for dramatic effect. "Stranded, surrounded, without hope of reinforcement, and responsible for millions of Imperial lives who at this very moment are being besieged by our enemies." There was no hint of defeatism in his voice, only an understanding of the situation. "Doom looms before us, as certain as the setting sun. There is no succor. Not unless you trust in my leadership and batten down the hatches."

"Siggy's got a plan?" chirped Crimson as her leaned over the table's edge in eagerness.

"I don't like the tone in your voice, lad. Braden Boarson takes no orders from the likes of you."

"Wait," Falk said, "Wait. Let him speak." The drop trooper had a glint in his eye, as if he was sensing a daring plan forming. The promise of risk lighting his curiosity.

Sigismund could sense he had his audience's attention, even if reluctantly in Boarson's case. "The Eldar have consistently made one thing clear. They want us to suffer for despoiling a world they arrogantly believe their own. They spared us, corralled us, and crippled us so that their vengeance could be dealt in a swift, and relatively safe manner."

"And?" grumbled the stern factorum master, whose forge ship was even now repairing the Lucius Dynasty's stricken vessels.

"They played their cards and now it's our turn. A trusted source of mine informed me that whatever they are planning, it will take place upon the surface of Ultra Primaris." Sigismund prepared his appeal. It was no easy thing to convince stubborn, free spirited people to stay put like sitting ducks. "Trust me comrades. Stay the course. We will make them believe they hold the high ground while we sap it from beneath them."

"And how exactly are we supposed to do that?" Falk asked, begging for the hook that would convince him.

Sigismund's mischievous smiled was his answer.

…

"Not so fast fly boy."

Jenny Crimson stepped in front of the wheeled recliner and planted a boot on Sigismund's chest. The servitor immediately halted his motion, as to not further collide with anything which would cause discomfort or pain for its master. How utterly it had failed, given the circumstances.

Sigismund cringed as his hasty exit was interrupted, barely a few meters out of the tall arched portal of the commercia chamber. He had given the rogue traders little more than firm promises and a great deal of conjecture, but it had worked. Having secured their assistance for the upcoming weeks at least, he had hoped to escape the woman that now grinded her heel over his vulnerable flesh

"You know, it wouldn't have killed you to send a few astropathic messages, once in a while."

The pained man lifted her tapered heel and forced her to set it down on the floor, but "Mad" Jenny was nothing if not perseverant. She decided instead to crawl into his lap and straddle him. With a flick of her wrist, she ordered the servitor onwards into the cavernous corridors of the _Boarson_.

"It's nice to see you again Jen," said Sigismund disingenuously.

"You'd think a lass would get more mileage from saving a man's life. Were those months aboard the _Stalker_ so unpleasant Siggy?" Crimson lifted the tricorne off her head and plopped it on Sigismund's head, it fit perfectly.

"No, but your brother's skulking was a little disturbing." The servitor continued to push the chair and its charges, the passing ratings casting curious gazes at the strange sight. "Is he aboard your ship?"

"No, Jonathan has his own ship now, plundered from an old shipyard floating about Redemption in the Ragged Worlds, as dead as the cemetery world." The auburn beauty shifted in the recliner, resting her back against Sigismund's chest and nesting, much to the man's discomfort. "Why, still think he'll make good on his threat to make your scepter kiss the knife's edge?" The lady captain sported a mocking smile, biting her lower lip as she baited Sigismund. The scion found the memory less entertaining than Jenny. "He's is a little protective. So am I for that matter, the tribulations of sharing a womb, you know."

"No Jen, not in the slightest. You know damn well I have no twin." Sigismund sighed, he was losing patience with her games. He had enjoyed them greatly, once. Jenny Crimson was exactly how he remembered her, wild and adventurous, spontaneous and provocative, a rough beauty worth bedding a thousand times.

The mad woman, and her equally mad brother, had taken him on as a junior officer a few decades ago. Knowing the _Semper Fidelis_ would be anchored at port for months after a rather bad void engagement, Sigismund had hid his identity and signed on to the _Stalker_. The adventures these knaves had undertaken had been the stuff of dreams for Sigismund. But eventually he had to return to port Footfall and his dereliction of duty had been attributed to a midlife crisis and readily swept under the rug by the Lord Dynast.

No, it wasn't Crimson who had changed. It was him, she just couldn't see it yet.

"In all seriousness Jen, thanks for bringing back my favorite hat. I missed it, I truly did, these last twenty-three years just haven't been the same without it, but…" Sigismund hefted the nesting pirate queen and pushed her off his chair's armrest. The woman let out a surprised eep as she struggled to keep her balance, having practically been thrown off Sigismund's chair. "I have my hands full as it is without having to juggle a nutter. See you around."

Jenny Crimson pressed knuckles to hips and cocked her head, a smile creeping onto her features as she prepared to laugh her rejection off. The laughter died in her throat however. As she watched the ambling servitor push the high backed chair down the throughway, the pirate queen wondered why her characteristic mirth had been so easily dispelled. Realization crept slowly into her heart and her features darkened.

Her brother had been right after all.

-/-/-/-

The Aquila Lander circled around the Nostromo consulate and landed a stone throw away from the main entrance. Toth had managed to convince the Imperial Guard manning the anti-air defenses of New Pariden that he was a special envoy retrieving sensitive navigator house documents. Remi's knowledge of his house's affair helped tremendously, in addition to his badgering of the vox operator. The combination had convinced the defenders that this was private business and that they should keep their noses to the grindstone.

Remi stormed down the boarding ramp in a huff and made straight to the estate's doors. If possible, the garish floral designed carved into the estate's façade was even more displeasing the third time around. House guards had reinforced the ludicrously decorated consulate. They let the angry navigator enter without as much as a challenge. Their oaths of service required them to keep the Eldar out, not their soul shearing masters. Heavily armed guards in the blue and purple of the Nostromo greeted Remi in the boudoir, he didn't have to wait long on the consuls this time around.

Ring fingers entered the chamber nervously, his eyes darting to every shadowy corner of the abode. He spoke before recognizing his unexpected guest. "Are we to be evacuated, are the Eldar close?"

Remi scoffed. When the consul realized who he was speaking to, a smile crept upon Remi's unkind features. "You aren't going anywhere. They have hit every major installation of the colony, and trust me they have no love for the Nostromo, I made sure of that. You are stranded here to await your death."

The consul huffed and adopted pompous indignation as his response. "How dare you!" the guards in the room seemed tense. They knew they would be the first to die if it came to it.

"How dare I? You bureaucratic buffoon!" Remi was stabbing a finger shaking with anger and spite. "I dare because you robbed me of my work and humiliated me. Me! Remi Nostromo! Now hand over what's rightfully mine!"

"Your work?" mumbled the shocked consul, far less arrogant without his dimorphic companions. They, too awkward to move about, were no doubt hiding in a protected sanctum deep under the estate. "But what about us?"

"I thought I made myself clear." Remi strode boldly to the consul and slapped him across the face. He repeated the motion half a dozen times for good measure, alternating cheeks in his generosity. The blows were weak but numerous, enough to insult without fear of undue injury. The consul tried to shield himself from the abuse, but Remi batted his arms away. After a few more derogatory slaps, the incensed navigator grabbed the consul by his robed collar. "You, and your malformed triumvirate, can die for all I care."

The house guards did their best to look away, halting the familial argument far from their mandated task. Indentured slaves were never, under any circumstance but a direct order, to lay a hand on a scion of the Nostromo House.

Ring fingers stuttered incoherently and finally managed to push himself from Remi's grasp.

"What? No!" the consul readjusted his robes nervously as he glared at his abuser in disbelief. "Heaven and earth is besieged by the xenos. If we are powerless to escape then so are you!"

"My allies are far more present than yours, consul. The House won't care if you die here. Why else would they send pathetic bureaucrats like you to establish a consulate? You're _disposable_."

The bejeweled consul gasped at the unpleasant truth, raising a hand to his mouth to cover his surprise. His demeanor changed immediately. "Please, Remi! In the name of the Paternova, take us with you. I'll get you your research. It's all here. We haven't had the time to send any of it away."

Remi smirked as he watched the earthbound navigator bow in contrite supplication, hands raised to offer his palms. "Groveling becomes you, consul." The dejected bureaucrat nodded in sycophantic agreement. It was startling how a man - even a navigator - would debase himself when his life was in peril.

Remi understood this truth more than most.

…

The trio of consuls were preceded by their house guards, now arranged in ceremonial rows. Behind them, the sullen shape of Meyer followed with heavy data caskets in hand. Blueprints and diagrams were stuffed under his arms as he struggled to bring with him the entirety of Remi's research.

Remi of course, could not resist the position of power had found himself in, and goaded over them all. He stood at the feet of the Aquila Lander, the recess of its hold dark and nebulously inviting. As the consuls began to embark, Remi stopped them with a proffered palm.

"Meyer first." The gloating navigator insisted. The consuls, both tall and fat, were as slighted as their peer had been upon meeting Remi moments before. Ring fingers quickly convinced his associates of the folly of insisting on protocols. A few half spat words and frantic hand gesturing settled the matter.

Meyer, for his part, kept his eyes low as he moved towards the ramp to board the craft.

Remi caught his arm on the way in. "I'm not through with you, you sniveling little turncoat."

Meyer whimpered softly, and hurried up the ramp, disappearing into the darkened hold. The consuls waited a moment more and then began their own ascent. Remi tutted.

"What now?" asked the bulbous consul in exasperation from atop his grav-couch.

"I'm afraid I never agreed to take you with me," smiled Remi vindictively.

"That's none sense. You clearly…" ring fingers revisited his conversation with the maniacal navigator in the boudoir, grimacing. "Have you no honor? You won't get away with this!"

Remi laughed. "Honor?" The claim was absurd. What had honor ever born the navigator houses? "Are you truly Nostromo born? I can see why our house discarded you"

"Guards!" called the lanky consul as she moved out of the way. The rows of house guard brandished their weapons and aimed at Remi. "Your arrogance has killed you Remi Nostromo. Good riddance. Your ship is now ours."

"Is that so?" grinned Remi.

The hold's lights flickered to life. A firing line was aimed at the consuls. Four troopers brandished their weapons from knelt positions. Above their shoulder, a hooded woman held a large bolt rifle. At her sides, an eye-patched mercenary absently juggled a krak grenade in one hand; while a misshaped figure in the robes of the cult of mars stood at her opposite side, a demolition satchel clasped in its mechadendrites ready to be catapulted into the midst of the house guards.

The two forces faced off, the consuls trapped between them. Remi had intentionally baited the bureaucrats, knowing well his kind's predilection to using house guards as meat shields. Less forceful tactics could have cause the negotiations to fail after all. The consuls cared little for their indentured soldiers, as surely as the House had cared little for its diplomats.

Remi confidently turned his back on his rivals, dismissing them archly, and disappeared within the hold as the armored ramp closed.

…

The tension broke as the members of Sola's team disarmed, preparing for the turbulence of flight. They stowed away their weapons and explosives before taking their seats. Barr was consoling a disappointed Pennette while Nius and Ferraro tried to catch some quick sleep before their next inevitable mission. Strangely, Devros and Pollux had found a common point of interest. As the bounty hunter strapped himself into his grav-harness, he engaged in a lively discussion about his numerous tools and devices. Pollux listened intently. She was far too enhanced to settle within the acceleration seats and so had clamped her arachnid-like appendages along the hold's metal skeleton. The twist catcher was thankful for her advice, while the tech priest was surprised at the ingenuity the laymen displayed.

"I can't believe you talked me into this," said Sola as she stowed away her weapon, ejecting the chambered shells of its internal magazine.

Remi shrugged but couldn't help smirking. Today his research was returned to him, and that made it a good day. "Thank you Sola, I owe you. And while we're on the subject of debts, I hope Sigismund will understand that he is responsible for procuring me another laboratory. Do you think you can expedite the process once this whole Eldar threat has passed?'

"A laboratory?" said Sola, now connecting the dots in her ever busy mind. "Is that why my budget allotment for the medical deck skyrocketed?" The facto settled down in her grav harness. "How did you get him to sign off on that?"

Remi settled next to her, keeping an eye on the sullen Meyer settling in the back. The navigator was insuring his junior was prioritizing the safety of the research before strapping himself in. Understandably, Meyer was keeping a low profile, and hadn't spoken to anyone in the craft, his circumstances compounding his shyness.

"Hm? What? Oh the laboratory. I just promised to behave. You should try that sometime, leverage your services for more than just a stipend. Maybe you could get a library, or something."

Sola sank into her seat, tired and bothered by missing details. Her mind worked in conjunction with her implanted cogitator to unravel the as-of-yet undiscovered means by which the Eldar would reap their vengeance. "Library?" grumbled the facto, "Sigismund owes me more than just a library." She closed her eyes and sighed longingly. "Much more."


	15. Chapter 15

_**Into the Breach:**_

_**Part 15**_

This is how millions of souls perished. Swept from a world's surface because of one man's failure to save them. His failure to act.

Sigismund watched the roiling clouds danced along Ultra Primaris from the gloom of his guest chambers. The _Boarson_ was a younger ship than those of the Dynasty, by at least a few centuries. She had also been wrought from a different orbital yard. The aesthetics had a Segmentum Obscurus feel to it; it was a lathe world creation, through and through.

The architecture could only distract so much however. Through the meter thick observation windows of the _Boarson_, floating out of the planet's gravitational reach, Sigismund watched a world die. No, not die, for the planet would survive this storm; it was its inhabitants who would disappear from its surface. They would be disintegrated by the psychic storm, leaving only trace artifacts of their existence.

"It's not your fault." Evangeline was standing behind him, accompanied by Lady Zenobia. For the first time since leaving her world of birth, the lady was allowed to leave the _Chariot_. Her husband dead, and threats to her fidelity now rendered inconsequential, the elderly woman had taken to her daughter's side. They were inseparable, and their joy lightened the sorrow clawing at Sigismund's heart.

"Listen to sense Sigismund. You have done all that was humanly possible to safeguard this colony." Zenobia rested a matronly hand on the newly installed regent of the Lucius Dynasty, whose duties were that of the Lord Dynast in everything but name. While his father slept in stasis moments away from death, time's trickle slowed to a standstill, leadership befell to his heir.

"All that is _humanly_ possible?" Sigismund turned, letting Zenobia's hand slip from its perch, and bore into her with his reddened eyes. "For seven days, I have pandered to the traditions of the dynasty, to the shaken nobles who voyaged aboard the _Son of Ultramar_, to a furious sibling whose cooperation is beyond my grasp, and strained to hold together a crumbling edifice of alliances and oaths. I have borne the titan's due and held aloft a world and its dying people on my shoulders!"

The Regent swore with gritted teeth and stomped across his generous but dour chambers, ripping at his robes of office to cast them away. His heated gestures set his sister on edge.

"Sigs? What are you doing?" Evangeline asked, a hint of panic in her voice. Her brother had been the image of fortitude these last, painful days. Sigismund had adopted a persona more akin to that of his false father, the better to hold things together, and the younger sibling feared the strain exerted against his nature was finally leading him to the edge.

"If lords and titans cannot save a world," spat the impassioned Sigismund. "Then I will do what men have done since before the Emperor sat on his golden throne. I'm going to do everything which is _humanly_ possible, or die trying!"

Sigismund was ravaging his wardrobe, casting its content to the wind in search of a practical alternative to his stately robes, standing in little more than his chiton.

"Sigismund," pleaded Zenobia as she exchanged worried glances with Evangeline. "My intent was not to slight your efforts. You have done better than anyone could, even your father."

Sigismund fought with his trousers and slipped into a semblance of his former self. He paused with an incredulous expression. "You didn't even tell your mother? Truly, there has never been a more loyal sibling. But there is no reason to hide the truth from her." Sigismund tossed on a brocaded coat on and kissed Evangeline's forehead as he struggled to slip his arms in the proper sleeves. He looked at Zenobia. "The man you married was not my father."

"Sigs!" gasped Evangeline, eyes darting around the unfamiliar chambers. Her brother ignored her concerns and carried on.

"You might not have met him though, by the time you married Anthonid he was already the steward of the _Semper Fidelis_. His name was Horatio Hubert, and he would not have sat on a throne worrying about the demands of his laurels. He would have done what his heart told him to do, no matter the cost."

Lady Zenobia nodded, a plausible course of an action for one who had fancied dallying with the Lord Dynast's wife. Zenobia wondered if she had this man to blame for the stringent hold Anthonid had kept on her. It seemed this dynasty was riddled with problems, most of which the result of their traditional treatment of women. Sigismund entertained no illusions about his chances of survival. He was going to meet the storm head on. But why? Zenobia had met no man willing to die on a whim. There were only a few forces in this galaxy which could drive men to suicidal intent; chief amongst them were honor and love, and one was often out of reach of the other.

"This Sola Villanueva, does she have anything to do with this?" said Zenobia.

Evangeline's eyes lit at the Vice Factotum's name. If Sola was still on Ultra Primaris, despite the storm, then Evangeline had been right. Sola was no renegade, no thief, and Sigismund was going to risk life and limb to see her again before the end. Zenobia caught her daughter's expression.

"I see this woman has inspired love and loyalty alike in a great many people: A man who would be willing to sacrifice power and wealth; a sworn protector, used and discarded, yet ready to serve unto death; and my daughter, my beautiful angel, whose inspiring faith is sacrament enough to make me a believer."

Sigismund couldn't agree more, she was that and more. No cost could match her worth.

"How can we help, then?" relented the matriarch.

"If I die, then Lucretia would be the first female Lord Dynast in the dynasty's history. While my objection does not lie in her gender, but rather her nature, the senatorum will buckle and without its traditions, the Dynasty will fall apart. You can help me by insuring your own safety as well as Evangeline's." Sigismund pulled a signet ring from his finger and handed it to Evangeline. "For what it's worth, I endorse Evangeline's succession. Though if the dynasty finds out I'm a bastard that might not be worth much at all."

"The journal!" said Evangeline.

"Destroy it," Sigismund said firmly. Evangeline was reticent to destroy the only link her brother had with his blood father. There were many pages wherein Hubert spoke to Sigismund, hoping that one day, hidden within its pages, his son would know the truth and why Hubert had hidden it. "Every single page must be burnt. The Dynasty is worth more to its servants and it ever will to me, do it for them. Save it from choking on its own tail."

Evangeline nodded. Part of her wanted to refused, but Sigismund knew she would do the right thing in the end.

The Lady Dynast wrung her hands together, making her decision.

"Chastity has been at my side ever since the Virgin Guard sequestered itself in mourning," said Zenobia "The absence of service has been difficult on them. But if I can offer succor to only one, then I am pleased it is her." The matron walked to the chamber's portal and activated the chime. The young warrior appeared moments after and knelt, head bowed.

"How may I serve," asked Chastity.

"By following your heart, my sweet child," answered Zenobia.

The warrior child lifted her head, confusion writ large on her young features. Sigismund walked to where she knelt and offered her his hand.

His roguish smile was all the explanation she needed.

-/-/-/-

The strategium was buzzing with activity. Staffers and junior officers ran from one side of the room to the other, accumulating data and carrying the short hand reports to their superior. Real time information was relayed in the massive holo-projector at the strategium's heart. Munitorum tacticians insured that the invisible machinery of war was readied, refueled, and rearmed. Though the Brigadier-Colonel was in command, there was an endless series of details which needed to be resolved, too many for him to realistically attend to.

At his side, wearing a practical dress uniform reminiscent of home, Josephine Della seconded her husband. None but the munitorum staffers questioned her presence, she was part of the legend which had brought them across the stars, and the soldiers were emboldened by her presence. What could the xenos possibly throw at them that would defeat the combined heroism of Persephonia's paragons?

Lurking at the edges of the large domed chamber was Trevin's command squad. Sergeant Melot was controlling access to the room. A trio of cloaked individuals waited impatiently under the watchful eyes of guardsmen in full battle gear. Tension ran high, every soldier expecting the very real possibility of an Eldar attack. The xenos' speed and grav technology meant that they could strike with impunity at Imperial targets, the only defense being anti-aircraft guns which were woefully unsuited to interdict low elevation incursions.

Josephine leaned towards Augustus, "They're here…"

Trevin turned from the holo-projection he had been studying, all across New Pariden attacks were underway. He was haggard after nearly fifteen days of operational command, but his gaze was diamond hard. Stims and recaff kept his body going, but they did little to sharpen his mind. That had long been forged into unyielding steel by the crucible of war. Madmen prospered when worlds burned; rising as lords over the remains of broken bodies.

Trevin waved the cloaked visitors over and Melot obliged, though his guarded stare made it clear half the room's defense detail would have their guns pointed at the visitors. The matching cloaks earned more attention than the trio had intended, but what else could be expected in a room full of uniforms.

"Greetings Brigadier-Colonel," said Sola as she bowed before the lord and lady. Her partners lingered quietly behind her. The one who glided along the floor was looking around a fair amount, by the sway of his hood.

"No time for pleasantries," grumbled Trevin. "Time is of the essence and I have had enough of playing cat and mouse with the Eldar." Frustration colored the Brigadier-Colonel's expression. "Not to mention I still don't have a kill confirmation on the orc boss you lot fought off."

While Trevin's attention was occupied, his wife took over at the holo-projector's lectern, the stream of officers from the various regiments flowing to her without missing a beat.

"The storm is at the cusp of exploding," said Remi. Over the course of the last few days his mind had been pressed with psychic stimuli. As a navigator, the Nostromo knew well enough the signs of the warp's influence. He could hear the ethereal winds ripping at city, feel the crackling of unseen lightning fall all around him. His senses were dull compared to those of Astropaths, never having been intended for more than parting the veil to plunge into the sea of souls. He could only imagine how the witches were suffering from the constant assail on their minds. "The Eldar will finish their summoning soon and it will blow across the surface of this world, snuffing the soul-light of every man, women, and child." Remi adjusted his robes nervously, the roaring winds of the aether ever present.

Trevin rubbed his brow with aching fingers. "You're going to have to take it from the top."

"It's a long story," sighed Sola. The barrel chested man at her side nodded his head in agreement, which gave Trevin the impression that the one eyed man still didn't quite understand the events that had transpired.

-/-/-/-

There was a strange sense of detachment from the scene playing out in front of her. Sola watched as clouds of powdered ice crystals swirled before her eyes. The surface beneath her shimmered enchantingly. It looked like snow, but Sola knew better. Everything surrounding her was cold, lifeless ice reflecting the light of Ultra Primaris' sapphire blue sun.

It was night, or rather the barren surface of this strange world gave off that impression. Impossible winds ripped at Sola's body glove, but she didn't feel cold. Her flesh did not feel the sting of the minuscule ice shards she knew should be biting into her uncovered face. The landscape was empty but for translucide ice peeks stabbing into the void, sparkling dust, and once smooth crevices now the color of milky gemstones.

Only the silence of an abandoned world. Sola was alone, at least, until the Eldar appeared.

The lithe figure stepped out of the swirling, shimmering ice dust. Sola intuitively understood that the Eldar had come from far, far away. Yet, the xenos belonged, had always belonged exactly where she stood. Sola should not have known this, and the well from which she drank this knowledge was unknown to her. The Eldar's creamy white and ivy robes glowed softly with inner light, and though the xenos was dressed for war, only peace and calm radiated from her person. Her smooth bone-like breast plate was bejeweled, with runes snaking along its surface, alight with hidden power. A long surcoat with broad shoulders rested over her armor, its trailing length billowing in the soundless wind. In one hand, the xenos held a spear of startling beauty, frail and thin yet brimming with the will of its wielder. The blade shivered in the airless cold, keening a melodious promise with every step its mistress took. In her other hand, the tall, captivating woman nestled an elongated helm in the crook of her arm.

"Where are we?" asked Sola breathlessly.

The Eldar's silken blond hair danced on invisible currents and obscured the woman's features, but her wide eyes were never lost. They glowed with electric light, a sure sign of witchery.

"Many questions crowd your mind. When you revisit this memory, will this what you remember?" asked the mysterious Eldar in her mellifluous tone. Sola blinked speechlessly. The xenos spoke as you would to a child. This experience, all of it, was far from what Sola had envisioned.

"Elamnyl gave you my message. You have come to parley?" Though the Eldar irked Sola's pride with her tone, the emissary was right. It mattered not what this dreamscape was, as long as lines of communication could be forged between the two warring people.

"Yes, and no." The Farseer smirked. The simple act of a bemused stranger indulging another. "I have come because you are interesting to me, Sola of the Shroud."

"Of the…?"

"You stand at a nexus within the skein, where the strands of fate meet and twist. Your decisions will influence more than you can imagine, and your path so frayed it is shrouded in darkness. I cannot see… and thus I have come to shed light on this oddity."

"You're a Farseer," realized Sola, the most powerful witches of the Eldar kind. The thought of the xenos touching her mind this way made Sola shiver unconsciously. Revulsion and fear combined set the facto's mind ablaze with the horrors the Eldar could inflict. Sola wrapped her arms around herself. The darkness grew, the ice clouds forming thick and swirling patterns, all but masking the witch from sight.

"Calm," commanded the Eldar, and the flurry settled. Her eyes blazed with psychic might as Sola felt her fear melt away.

"You're in my mind. This place is… it's me?"

"No, this is not your mind. It is but a dream of a memory. An imagined depiction of Syvva- the wandering moon. Though it is interesting that you would receive me in such a place. Your psyche hides itself from the visitor you invited."

Sola forced herself to focus. Everything felt so ephemeral, like wisps of truth hidden behind a veil willingly left untouched. Was this a dream? That made sense, but would she remember this discussion upon her waking?

"You said Elamnyl gave you my message, but you haven't come to parley?"

The Farseer began pacing slowly, circling the wary human. "I have not." The Eldar's steps were oddly staggered, always shrouded by the mist and the wind, her features obscured, as if Sola's mind found it difficult to grasp the Eldar's being. "You have brought us the souls of the lost. Such a gift is worth indulging your will. More importantly, it demands reciprocity."

"What does that mean?" asked Sola, now beginning to feel the gnawing cold seep over her. Was the dream unravelling?

"The Eldar return your gift of life." The xenos stopped pacing, her gaze wreathed in billowing, etheric flames. Power echoed in her words, bringing with it the weight of certainty. "Your fate entwines you with a man. A wolf wearing the skin of lions. Through him you will find the ferry that leads you to safety. The barge is filled with the mad and the selfish, those who will never return here. But beware the ferry's cost, which no coins will pay. The Eldar of Biel-Tan promise you this, a thousand souls will be spared for the dozen you have retuned."

The silhouette of the Farseer slowly receded into the darkness of the mindscape, and Sola began to feel the slicing pain of the ice crystals against her cheeks.

"But what of the others?" ask Sola. The Facto chased the fading echo of the Eldar's prophesy. Her limbs were deadened from the cold and her breath came with difficulty. Slowly, her lungs filled with the deathly embrace of ice. Sola collapsed, the last whispers of the Eldar caressing her mind.

"They will perish for their insolence. The world spirit will see to it."

-/-/-/-

"What does that even mean?" said Trevin angrily. This entire phantasmal recollection was a waste of time. Time he did not have while the Eldar pressed his people into hiding within the city.

Remi scoffed with as much impatience as the Brigadier-colonel. "The world spirit!" he said, as if that was the answer to everything. In Truth, it had taken Remi quite some time to decipher the significance of the words Sola had spoken upon awakening. He pulled the sleeves of his robes back to grasp some invisible object. "The Eldar are broadly split into three factions," Remi's years of xeno-archeology were finding themselves quite invaluable now. "One such faction, the Exodite, found sanctuary on maiden worlds and eschewed technology. Unlike the Craftworld Eldar they bare no spirit stones but rely on the spirit of the world they inhabit to anchor their souls upon death, becoming one with the crystalline matrix at its core."

"And?" said Trevin.

"We verified Remi's hypothesis," said Sola. "Adept Pollux cored the sediment of select areas. We found psychoactive crystal particulates in abnormal amounts."

"Means it can't be the draw of the luck," added the burly man who had until now deigned better to keep quiet. The man smirked happily at the one bit he had figured out by himself and he adjusted his eye patch.

"The Eldar will use the crystal matrix core of this world to supercharge a psychic event capable of wiping us out. This event is the very storm which has steadily grown day by day and now threatens to explode," emphasized Remi.

"Let me guess," growled the commander. "The radius of something like that would be enough to cover a five hundred kilometer square region?" asked Trevin as he looked over his shoulder at the city scape, an area of about roughly the same size.

Sola nodded, having run the complex calculations hours before. She had to give the Brigadier-Colonel credit for his intuitive grasp of the situation. He knew exactly how to use the bigger picture to his advantage.

"Well at least that explains why they aren't riding their momentum into the city. They don't need to. Every human being left in this colony is right here in New Pariden, exactly where they want us to be."

"We need to issue a request for a geological survey from orbit of areas which were deemed unnecessary before, those we have so far wouldn't fit the Eldar's designs." Sola was already looking for a communication hub which could send the transmission into orbit. "We must have missed something in previous scans."

Trevin rubbed the back of his neck sighing. "That's going to be harder than it sounds. After their scrap up there the rogue traders have been in disarray. From what I've been told, the _Son of Ultramar_ and the _Semper Fidelis_, are out of action after sustaining heavy damage. The _Valhalla_ is already cursing me to hell because of all the air support I'm asking, and the _Boarson _is docked out of the gravitational pull of the planet with the damaged ships. And some issue arose onboard of the _Chariot_ and it doesn't seem to have an acting captain at the moment, not to mention the _Stalker_ is days out probing the void for possible escape routes."

The crestfallen faces surrounding Trevin testified to the unlikely possibility of getting an augury done. The scan would take hours to accomplish even without the complications at hand and the chrono was ticking. When you added all the red tape of naval procedures, it didn't look good. They needed a miracle, as it stood there was nothing anyone in this room could do.

A small commotion drew the attention of the entire strategium. Weapons were aimed at a man in a light power armor, its sculpted ceramite plates detailing the divine perfection of the human form. A deep crimson cape bearing the Lucius Dynasty's crest hung below a thrumming power pack on the warriors back, and a large silvered shield was held at his side.

The warrior who wore the ancestral wargear of the dynasty was unhelmed, his eyes scanning the room and finally resting on Sola and Trevin. He smiled and nodded, raising his shield in salute in lieu of the arm which boasted a mounted storm bolter.

As he was granted official permission to enter the strategium, another cloaked figure hurried after him, she didn't look more than sixteen to Trevin, but she bore herself like a trained soldier. Sigismund walked with his usual swagger, the one which had convinced so many before that everything would be fine.

Trevin looked up at the large Imperial Aquila hammered into the strategium's domed ceiling and slowly folded his hands across his chest in supplication. If anyone had the authority to sort this mess out, it was the scion.

-/-/-/-

Evangeline stood on the unfamiliar bridge of the _Chariot_ directing the approach.

"Entering geosynchronous orbit," announced the mistress of the helm. Evangeline had noticed that the use of ma'am and my lady, but never captain. That honor was reserved for Lucretia, who sulked in her ready room. Sigismund had been clear. "Take command of the _Chariot_ and run a deep augury of uncharted areas." Well, that was easier said than done.

Not only had Evangeline and a handful of armsmen from the _Semper Fidelis_ seconded another crew –loyal to the dynasty only in the vaguest of sense, the young captain had to command an unfamiliar vessel into a dangerous manoeuver. It was easy to see the doubt in the bridge crew. For all but a chosen few, the _Chariot_ was their world, and Lucretia their mistress. They had known no other way of life, and never would.

The creek of an opening hatch stiffened Evangeline's back. The captain's cupola was an elevated platform whose bride facing façade was a carefully chiseled depiction of three wild stallions bucking pulling their charge, a symbolic as well as literal chariot. The only adjacent chamber to the cupola was, baring the steps down, the ready room.

Lucretia slipped into Evangeline's periphery, softly trailing a hand along the stone banister of the cupola. The vessel dipped to port and juddered, her skeleton groaning from the thruster/gravity differential. Evangeline staggered, recovering slowly, all sense of poise and grace lost while her sister hid her smirk. Lucretia had remained perfectly balanced with the help of the banister she had been casually holding.

"She tends to do that when approaching worlds," remarked Lucretia offhandedly.

"I'll have to thank your pilot for forgetting to inform me," said Evangeline as she straightened out her crimson uniform, golden tassels jangling from her epaulettes.

"A good subordinate follows orders despite his or her reservations." Lucretia looked over the heads of her bridge crew. They worked diligently at their posts, casting quick glances at the cupola from time to time. Its location above the bustle of machine chatter and crew pits made it a surprisingly private place despite being the center of attention. "It's when they start acting out of order that things fall to pieces, or, when they mutiny against their rightful ruler."

"Are we still talking about a ship's crew, Lucretia?" The young captain adjusted the cuffs of her sleeves roughly. "Because the matter about Sigismund is closed." Evangeline ordered a maneuverability thruster correction, as she would have had she known of the transport's tendencies to roll to port.

"Father is unconscious, his judgment forestalled by the xenos attack, but the matter is far from over. I would have gotten to the bottom of this had that petulant bodyguard not gone running beneath your mother's skirts. Here and now is when we need strong leadership, if the dynasty is to survive," said Lucretia. Her words began to drip with the spite she held coiled in her chest. She waxed cruel and vicious when their brother was involved.

"Why do you hate him so much?" said Evangeline.

"I have no need to defend my actions to you, little sister."

"I'm not asking for a defense. I want to know why you bear such a grudge." Evangeline slowly turned her gaze to her lectern, lingering on Lucretia. "It seems one sided."

"In augury range m'am. Strong magnetic and atmospheric turbulence will affect the divination. Proceed?" asked the mistress of etherics, speaking into the grilled vox-thief at her station. Her voice sounded distant and scratchy over the cupola's command lectern, itself imbedded in the stone chariot sculpture.

"Proceed," said Evangeline sternly. "Full power to the augury array."

An awkward silence hung between the two sisters, a lifetime of secret memories between them. Finally, Lucretia spoke.

"I suppose you mean beyond his insufferable behavior, or his discourteous gallivanting, or even his repetitive endangerment of human life and dynastic property?"

Evangeline nodded silently, keeping an eye on her lectern and the bridge crew operations. She cast a sideways glance at her eldest sibling. Sigismund's list of misdemeanors were long and painfully public within the dynasty's upper echelon.

The bitter woman crossed her arms over her chest and rested a hip against the stone banister at her side, a forlorn expression haunting her features. "He killed my mother. Did you know that?" Lucretia let the accusation hang in the air expecting to be rebuffed, but Evangeline was truly letting her say her piece. "She died in child birth. Of all the power vested in the title of Lord Dynast, and our father couldn't even save his first wife."

Gone was the venom in Lucretia's voice. There was only the dull pain of long ago scars. "I suppose the fool will get his birthright now that father lays dying, despite being unworthy of it. Our lot is to be subject to an idiot king." Silence bridged the gulf between the sisters again. Finally, Lucretia spared her little sister a long envious stare. "Do you remember your years with Zenobia?"

Evangeline shook her head softly, her bound hair swaying with the motion. "No, not truly. It's been a decade."

"They must have been happy years then," sighed Lucretia. She turned her head and paid undue attention to the orb floating in the magnified view ports of the bridge, hiding the wetness in her eyes. "I remember my mother's death, and every year after. I was six. I remember losing my father soon after, though it was to something far more insidious than death. The joyful and adventurous man he was became sullen and ponderous. He cast away his truest friends from the senatorum, unable to bear their familiar council and leaving Hubert to captain the _Semper Fidelis_. That was when I also lost my uncle, for that was what Horatio had always been to me. In exchange, I was left with a bratty, snot nosed brother who constantly cried. Not exactly equitable, as far as trades go."

The _Chariot_'s mistress of the helm wrestled with the control column and the ship shuddered again, finally prying itself from another ponderous dip towards the planet it circled. Beneath it, vast cloud systems broiled around the eye of a hurricane, its gaze glowering at the city of New Pariden.

"I'm sorry," offered Evangeline.

"Why?" scoffed Lucretia as she turned to leave, pausing beside the command throne, yearning fingertips caressing its tapered brass edges. "You like Sigismund will live different lives, find different ways to cope. The fool will continue to flee his responsibilities, I will fester alone with my hate, and you… you will come to mourn your mother in your own way. When she is returned to her world and cast away, while your beloved brother choses a young wife as tradition dictates, you will be forced to say your goodbyes. By the time you break out of the warp again, and time twists itself back into place, she will have died a discarded shell. All because you had to serve a dynasty our brother will squander."

Evangeline blinked her discomfort away. She knew of the dynasty's traditions. She knew what would happen to her mother, and what that meant. The life of a rogue trader scion was a lonely one. Evangeline had hoped she would be able to ignore the painful truth a little while longer, but somewhere deep down, Lucretia had been unable to resist salting the wound. Pain was lightened when shared, willingly or otherwise.

The bitter woman let go of the command throne and looked over her shoulder. Her younger sister was a mirror of who Lucretia had once been. A telling reflection, despite their different mother. They both were products of a patriarchal dynasty which demanded servitude with one hand, but discarded its daughters with the other. Lucretia was tempted to close the book on this painful remembrance, but found one last hook buried in the flesh of her psyche.

"I despise him so, Evangeline, foremost because Sigismund was given a name which would forever remind me of the pain he caused. Every time they say his name, I hear my father's voice calling to my mother. He would always call her 'Siggy'.

Lucretia left her younger sister and headed to her ready room. The pet name still lingered on her lips. She had to bite down on her tongue to still its burning venom.

-/-/-/-

Another bright lance flashed by the hovering Valkyrie. An incoming drop ship screeched as it was speared through the gut. It came crashing hard and disintegrated on the sandy beach a few dozen of meters ahead of Trevin and his command squad.

If any doubts remained as to the position of the Eldar ritual, those were instantly dispelled.

Trevin had gathered a fresh battalion from Brisbane's 3rd. Despite their many casualties, the regiment had volunteered for the mysterious task, confident that the mechanized infantry and their Leman Russ support could hold the Eldar at bay in New Pariden. The battalion had mounted aboard captain Falk's waiting Valkyries, and by the time the three companies of heavy infantry were ready to take to the air, the _Chariot_'s auguries had located a sizable crystal deposit on a lonely island in the middle of a yet to be name sea.

Four hours after learning of the Eldar plot to murder the inhabitants of Ultra Primaris, the Guard was storming the enemy beach under anti-vehicular fire. The xenos structure at the heart of the island was the source of their present predicament. Its towers rose like great fingers grasping around its central spire. They had a glossy organic sheen that made Trevin's stomach twist into knots. Everything about the structure churned the human gut, from its bulbous spire bases to its arching blade like buttresses. There wasn't a straight angle in the thing, only tubular orifices and gem like viewing ports, reaching high into the air with an arrogant air of superiority. Leave it to the creatures, even their buildings looked snobby.

The command squad dropped onto the sandy banks before the Valkyrie had time to lower its ramp to the ground. A dozen other assault crafts went through the same motions, disgorging an entire company's worth of guardsmen onto the ground. As soon as his boots sank into the gritty ground, Trevin dropped to a knee, pain shot through his legs and back. The Brigadier-Colonel shook his head, riding the surge of energy the combat drop offered. He made a show of checking his armored boots' latches. Better his men think he was meticulous to a fault then see two weeks of fatigue knifing him in the back.

Lancer pulled his friend and commander up by the pit of his arm, a worried expression on his face. Trevin ignored him and charged forward with the rest of the company, clearing the landing zone for the second wave of transports to hover over their designated drop point. Every moment they spent in the air was another the tower's lances speared out, their prismatic halos giving away their position atop their bone spires. Melot waved men onwards, spurring them to follow the disembarkment plan.

By the time the first wave hit the soft brush surrounding the Eldar complex, another two Valkyries had exploded. Almost twenty men died within their crafts as they crashed on the beach and broiled alive. The smell of promethium and burning flesh wafted over Trevin. Steld watched powerlessly as men she could do nothing for threw their flaming bodies onto the beach, or sprinted towards the lapping waves. Their dead bodies still burned as their panicked struggle came to an end.

"Orders?" asked an officer taking cover by Trevin's command squad. It was Captain Frost, the same woman who had stood toe-to-toe with the ork in the caverns. That meant Brisbane was probably nearby too. Trevin clearly remembered ordering the man to board the last wave, making sure the command echelon would be intact in the event of a catastrophic landing. He would have to speak with the thick mustache wearing officer, whose facial hair seemed as obtuse as its owner.

"Press on," Trevin yelled over the sound of exploding promethium tanks, "Take out those damned lances out and secure the third wave's disembarkment. Crush the AA and Falk will sign off on those air strikes he promised us. We need that air support, we can't afford to lose any more men!"

The sprightly officer saluted then waved her men forward. She bounded after them with her saber held high, her thick braid whipping out from beneath her helmet. The 3rd was now in its element and it showed. They carried their carapace armors without as much as a hint of their weight. The same went for the weapon specialist and their eighteen kilo plasma guns, or the heavy weapon teams and their auto-cannons. They boldly charged, pounding the ground as they went, into the jaws of the enemy ready to give twice as good as they got.

The command squad was ready to follow. Corvin ejected his magazine and knocked it against his helmet before slipping it back into his bolt gun's ammo slide. He gave Trevin a wolfish smile, all scars and broken teeth.

"Let's hope the rogue trader had an easier time of it," mumbled the commander before leaving his cover. The second wave was on the horizon, coming in fast and would be dropping its cargo of guardsmen in under a minute. Trevin intoned the prayer of dutiful service as he checked his plasma pistol, and unlimbered his power sword. He glanced at his closest friends and protectors, his grim visage set for battle.

"Well come on then lads, or are you all waiting for Saint Epona to ride to the rescue?"

-/-/-/-

Before they had left new Pariden, Remi had heard a few dullards mentioned how they could hear alien whispers on the winds. To the navigator, those whispers were howling hash of interference. The Eldar reached into the warp in a different way than Imperial psykers, this much he knew. He did not know how exactly –it had something to do with their methodology, the use of psycho insulating runes- but the result was a strangely distilled psychic essence. There were no daemons screaming to inflict horrors untold, or tempting whispers drawing one to darkness and corruption. It was power without the interfering will of the warp's denizens, and that possibility was intriguing.

While Remi pondered the intricacies of the Eldar's psychic mastery, Meyer was beside him tasting the air with a strange expression. The bumbling fool sampled a veritable catalogue of psychic imprints buccally. He was laden with Remi's weapons, a manservant forced to accompany Remi in his misery and tend to his ill-gotten armament. Amongst those, and perhaps intended as a slight, was a lengthy power glaive taken from the corpse of a howling banshee, and a surprisingly weightless shuriken canon. Meyer also carried an assortment of ammunition cylinders which the Eldar used to feed their weapons, a few grenades of dubious effect, and a satchel of Remi's favored refreshments and paired snacks.

The Aquila Lander banked as it approached the Eldar temple. Its central structure reached high into the sky. It was wide and rounded at its base, like a flower's bloom, but tapered into a conical spire after its midpoint. The temple, arches and buttresses decorating its flanks like lace, sat at the center of a scrimshawed plaza surrounded by traced ellipticals and runes. Studding the plaza's edges were the spires which were used to spit death at the guardsmen's transports from across the island.

As a temple, the structure boasted no true defensive architecture or battlements. This place had never been intended to host war's corrosive touch. But the Eldar had taken advantage of its haunting beauty to place portable defenses. True to their tactics, static defenses were eschewed for the mobility of grav platforms.

And this served the Eldar well. As the Lander came swooping low in its faint, a pair of weapon platforms were repositioned to face the insertion team. The grav platforms glided into place, along with its supporting defenders, and leveled their long muzzle at the offending human craft. A prismatic halo appeared as the bright lances' focusing crystals hummed with power, the split light finally gathering into a beam of pure blinding light.

Within the Lander, red and yellow signal lights twirled in their meshed cages. Whooping sirens rang angrily. The passengers gripped their harness as their claustrophobic world turned upside down. Toth veered in and out of the latticing fire, his proximity to the ground complicating his manoeuvers greatly. The Lander's chin mounted auto canon barked and sent fire careening into the tower, most of it hitting the ground at its base or its wide base. The fire availed them nothing. In truth, Toth had simply reacted on instinct, depressing the firing stud as he focused on his evasive manoeuvers.

The craft spun onto itself as it dodged beams, its metal wings spread wide, until finally a lance sheared through one of its plasteel appendage. The craft shuddered, aerodynamics compromised, and it was all Toth could do to keep it in the air. It skimmed the ground, barging through the thin vegetation nestled around the heart of the island. Toth's overcompensating yanks on the control column sent the Lander into a pitiful parabolic arc before finally colliding with the yielding dirt beneath it. Tons of plasteel and ceramite thermo shielding ripped a great furrow into the ground as they disintegrated. Its remaining wing ripped apart as it dipped and kissed the ground, sending the frame of the craft tumbling on its axis. The heap of its remains slid onto the plaza's edge and came to a burning halt. There, steel bones croaking their last complaints, the craft began to catch fire. Its last moments left it a ravaged wreck between the two great towers which had seen its end.

…

Sigismund ripped the remains of his harness with the help of his power armor's whirring servos. Light peered inside the broken shell of the Aquila lander's ravaged hold. Flames licked from the pilot compartment. A pang of guilt wringed Sigismund's heart when he saw Toth's charred limb hang from the piloting throne. Dread gripped him as he quickly turned to check on Sola. She was shaking her head, bruised and battered but alive.

"Everyone out!" yelled Sigismund as he helped Sola free herself from the partially crushed harness which locked her in. Chastity, in her full virgin guard wargear, was immediately at her mistress' side, making sure she was evacuated in good order.

"Ferraro's dead." Barr's tone was flat as he stood by the dead man's seat. Part of the hull had collapsed and ragged fragments were visible in Ferraro's remains. Nius gave his mate's body a long hard look before picking himself up with a visceral curse. Only a few feet separated the two friends, it could as easily have been his fate, but today Ferraro had been chosen to visit the Emperor's side. It didn't make the sting he felt any less vicious. Pennette squeezed Nius' shoulder and gave him a nod of understanding before getting her kit, it was the soldier's lot. Without a further word, the remaining storm troopers fetched their weapons from their surrounding and exited the wreck, staying close to its sweltering carcass for cover.

Sigismund made a quick check, everyone else seemed to be breathing, some more difficultly than others. He reached out to steady Sola, she glared back. Her eyes weren't focusing on him properly but anger simmered within them already. This was exactly the kind of situations she tried diligently to avoid, an aspiration which was rarely met in Sigismund's employ. As the concussed hazed evaporated from Sola's features, she took her surroundings in. She hefted the rifle her companions had taken to calling _Gob Slayer_ and followed the storm troopers' exit.

The rest of the team had already evacuated the wreck, the fire within gregariously eating up the breathable air. The situation wasn't much better outside. The Eldar defenders atop the spires were raining down a hail of shuriken. Sigismund's team was using whatever cover they could to shield themselves against the flanking fire. The troopers were returning fire, but the tower's elevation was offering their tormentors the advantage. Sigismund dropped out of the wreck once everyone was safe and grasped the situation well enough. He was, after all, often in compromising combat situation, he could easily be considered an expert.

"Do your plans always fail so utterly?" grumbled Remi, ducking as a shrill note informed him shurikens were being fired his way. Sigismund laughed and patted the navigator's shoulder, which sent Remi slinking away towards the terrified Meyer.

"I want some up right now! Adept, get up some better cover! Troopers, lay me down some suppressive fire!" The captain quickly issued his orders, confidence and excitement in his voice. To their credit, the insertion team didn't question the bold stratagem Sigismund had conjured from his mind. Devros and Meyer pulled the pins from blind grenades and lobbed them around the fallen craft, the latter fumbling with the pins long seconds in his terror. The air filled with thick chemical smoke and thermal baffles, ensuring a temporary reprieve from the accuracy of the Eldar fire.

In the meantime, Pollux ripped plasteel armor plates from the dead Lander with a binary appeal for forgiveness, her mechadendrites severing stubborn plasteel with plasma torch and pneumatically enhanced appendages. The techpriest then assembled impromptu cover using the same tools. Sporadic fire out of the smoke cloud convinced the Eldar that their enemies still had some fight in them.

"On my mark, we counter attack. Pixie cut, you're with me!" a chorus of voices answered the scion. He bent low by Sola and her bodyguard, his face hidden behind the visor of his sealed helm. "Keep your head down, this will be over in a minute. I promise."

Sola bit back harder then she had expected. "Don't make me false promises, I can take care of myself just fine." The shrill cry of Eldar fire zipped by, clanking off the plasteel by her head. Sigismund's impassive visor lingered on her. "Just go!" she yelled.

The artificial cloud of cover began to dissipate. Sigismund and Pennette began running for their tower, the swirling cloud of smoke disappearing around them. They sprinted the last twenty meters of open ground beneath the refractor imbedded hoplite shield of the dynastic scion. One of the Eldar above them had them squarely in his sights, his catapult raining slicing death upon his targets. The ancient technological spirit of the dynastic shield burned brightly and the pair neared the tower, still unharmed.

From their end, Barr and Nius plunged out of the hazy cover under the suppressive fire of their allies. Remi, braced against the jagged plasteel cover, unleashed flurries of molecular edges shuriken from his canon while Devros the twist catcher added the precise fire of his pistols to the mix. The one eyed bounty hunter guffawed when his pistols scored a hit, taking the time to sling insults along with his slugs.

Sola, also hunkered behind Pollux's slowly expanding cover, kept an eye out towards the temple proper. Her sight scanned the structure a few hundred of meters away for the inevitable force which would come to investigate the crashed craft. At her side, her armored bodyguard let her gaze slip from her mistress to the tech priest. While welding the plates together and their braces, the machine woman was an easy target. One of her many mechanical limbs held out a lander plate as a shield, its surfaced riddled with slices of shuriken. Despite the precaution, shots had found her mechadendrites and her unprotected legs. Blood and oil dripped in equal measure, but the adept was unaffected in her single minded task. Chastity returned her attention to covering Sola's back. Her mistress would not be as resilient as the adept were she hit.

Sigismund and Pennette finally cleared the tall arching portal of the tower's base. Its interior was an airy hollow. Stairs spiraled along its inner walls up towards the platform at its tapered apex. Sigismund had hoped for walls to put between himself the defenders. It looked like he would not be able to use the layout to his advantage. Another lesson learned, thought the scion. He should not have expected the structure to fit his preconceived mold, it had been built by alien minds after all. He and Pennette exchanged looks.

"Fun times," mocked the elite trooper. Sigismund shrugged his armored shoulders.

The pair began to hurry up the stairs. A few dozens of steps up the spiraling staircase, the Eldar at the top peered over the inner ledge and hefted shuriken catapults into firing position, ready to rain down death by a thousand cuts.

As Sigismund raised his shield, its silvered surface pinging with deflected projectiles, the power field sparked to life to disintegrate a score. Pennette sheltered behind the bulk of the power armored warrior, adding the sting of her hell gun to Sigismund's blanketing bolter fire.

The climb was slow, the firefight ebbing between stints of staunch pinning fire and rapid counter attacks. Using the tight strair case to their advantage, the Eldar flung plasma grenades on their implacable foes. Sigismund quickly stepped back, pinning Pennette between him and the wall and hunkered down behind his shield. The plasma flair released by the explosives turned the staircase into molten slag, swarming the pair in billowing clouds of superheated gas. The shimmering refractor shield kept the worst at bay, dropping a second after the expanding gas had gone. Staggeringly hot thermals washed within the bubble of displaced air the shield had provided with a thundering snap. The scion felt Pennette tap against his back plate to indicate her imperative to move. The pair jumped over the waxy remains of the stairs surrounding them and hurried on. The plasma grenades having failed to deter the stubborn Imperial advance, the Eldar abandoned their position.

Sigismund stepped out of the inner spire and onto the curved exterior platform, crouched defensively behind his shield, Pennette aiming over his shoulder. They moved as one, covering every angle of the balcony. From across the gulf between the towers, the black armored silhouette of Barr and Nius could be seen giving the all clear from their objective. Pennette cursed a livid streak, upset at being beaten to her objective.

"This is all your fault," grumbled the soldier. "Hiding behind your shield. What kind of man are you anyway?"

Sigismund noted that she had not complained about using him as mobile cover for most of the climb up. "A live one?" The trooper scoffed, unimpressed by his answer. The reason the Eldar had retreated made sense now. Barr had probably engaged their flank and so the defenders and their weapon platform had been forced to cut line of sight. Which could only mean one thing.

Around the curved edge of the spire came gliding a wraith bone chassis, hovering at waist height. It was no larger than a man was tall, with wide flaring wings that acted like a shield for the Eldar behind it. As one, the guardian squad in the now familiar livery of Craftworld Biel-Tan, fired their shuriken catapults.

Pennette immediately ducked behind Sigismund as the hail of fragments showered his armored hulk. A scintillating beam of energy shot from the platform, meeting the refractor field hidden in Sigismund's hoplite shield. The killing lance was blunted, blowing the power field out in a discordant shriek.

There would be no _encore_ of that miraculous occurrence.

Frag grenades rolled from each side of Sigismund's braced legs, Pennette given them just enough momentum to halt behind the shielded platform. The fragmentation blast threw one of the three Eldar from his feet and over the edge of the platform. The two others rolled out of the blast and were back on their feet in one fluid motion, firing again.

From across the gap, the storm troopers were unleashing angry red bolts of las fire at the bright lance. They were pushing their hell guns' effective range and risked hitting their allies. But the flashing las bolts were expertly aimed and their range instinctively known by their wielders. The firing shield of the platform glowed red from the discharge and began to run like molten steel.

Abandoning Pennette, who hadn't seem to appreciate his tactics anyway, Sigismund charged and vaulted onto the bright lance. The scion's ceramite clad boot hit the front chassis. He used his momentum to carry him over the platform into a roll. He landed behind the platform catching himself in a skidding crouch, his shield guarding him from one of the Eldar guardians while he unleashed a torrent of explosive shells at the other.

One of the surprised guardians dropped to the floor, his body chewed apart by the internal explosion of the bolt rounds, while the last remaining Eldar peppered the power armored warrior in their midst. Even without the power field the silvered shield blunted the munitions, rendering them all but useless against the ceramite beyond it.

Pennette dropped the last guardian as her squad mates melted the weapon platform into slag, its grav field faltering before finally crashing to the floor in a heap. Sigismund rose from his crouch, thankful for his armor's muscle bundles and protective aegis. The platforms were clear of enemies, the engagement won for now.

The vox squelched into life inside Sigismund's helm. "If you're done mucking about, we have company on the way." A fraction of a second later, Sola's _Gob Slayer_ barked. Its resounding retort seemed less irritated than her voice on the vox. Sigismund moved to the edge of the platform, letting his arm mounted storm bolter eject its spent magazines and fetching two more from his ammo pouch at his hip. The facto was right, they had company, and it didn't seemed happy to have visitors.

Across the plaza, squads of dire avengers hurried into defensive positions behind statues, fountains, and strangely smooth decorations. Their tall crested helms and fluttering banners promised war and retribution. None more than those born by their exarchs. It was going to be a tough fight, one they had not prepared to have. The weapon platform teams had been guardians, little more than militia by Imperial standards. The aspect warriors were the truly dangerous ones, and they were now arrayed for battle outnumbering Sigismund's lot three-to-one. The team had been supposed to insert themselves and disrupt the ritual while the Imperial Guard took the brunt of the fighting in hand. That plan had just been jettisoned out of the closest air-lock.

Pennette made it to Sigismund's side, looking at the Eldar taking position. She didn't seemed happy with what she saw. The trooper cast him a glance, as if wondering what else he could pull out of his ass.

"Fun times," Sigismund said mockingly. The trooper snorted.

The scion looked to the sky, a thought crossing his mind. Perhaps they could salvage this situation after all. Two out of the five defense towers were down, maybe they had made enough of an opening.

Sigismund sighed. "Well… let's hope the Brigadier-Colonel had a better time of it."


	16. Chapter 16

_**Into the Breach:**_

_**Part 16**_

The Seer Council meditated around the crystal node, spread out in a circle to add the keening of their mind to the world-song. Farseer Caille led them in their lulling of the Great Spirit. Its primordial essence refused to be beckoned and its mighty psyche howled in petulance, upsetting the delicate song being conducted. The council was formed of various Eldar seers, none more respected as Caille, with the notable exception of Farseer Isendrad. Together, they kept the ritual flowing despite the intrusion of the mon-keigh. Together, they labored with uncanny focus, under the shadow of the a Wraithlord and a handful of its lesser kin, the Wraithguards; their souls coaxed from the infinity circuit of their Craftworld to occupy wraithbone constructs of war. Together, the dead had come to serve along the living.

+Caille,+ hummed Isendrad in his mind-voice. His tall helm, decorated with the fiery gold of its orichalcum crests, turned to face Caille. +Maintain the song. Call the tempest. I will deal with the mon-keigh.+

+I have conducted the chant for hours. My mind frays at the edges, it can only be discordant, another must guide the song.+

As surely as any of the council, Isendrad had felt the boisterous minds of the humans crack the shell of the temple. For days now the Eldar had meditated at the foot of the massive crystal node. They had, like a choir of brilliant souls, sung the keening mind-song until exhaustion forced them to pass on the weighty charge. One after the other, time and time again, they shared the burden of wrangling the mighty spirit of the world. Soon it would keen in harmony with their will and unleash the psychic storm.

+We must all do what we are called upon to do. Your time has come, as has mine. You know this to be true.+

The Farseer sighed, exhaustion radiating from her mind-voice as well as her body. With a thought, Caille acquiesced. Isendrad rose and brushed his robes clean. The heart of the node chamber was a great domed expanse. For hundreds of meters in every direction, a bewildering forest of beautiful flora sheltered the crystal node, hiding this raw and exposed foci of the great psycho-active matrix. It was this very same paradise that was now threatened by the crushing boots of the heavy heeled Imperials.

Isendrad felt the tinge of doubt clouding Caille's psyche. The Farseer felt responsible for this unseen occurrence, as if she had let the child-like humans understand something she did not believe possible for them to grasp. Whether it was the case or not, the martial minded Farseer did not care. Caille had done her duty, exploring the shadows cast upon the weave. She had looked for means of defeating the foe without drawing the blades of the _Bahzhakhain_. Isendrad had been tasked with the opposite. He had foreseen the nature of their foe, and prepared in kind.

With a thought the Farseer called his allies to his side. When he set foot out of the ivy green forest of the temple's heart, a half score of Exarchs awaited on his wisdom to persecute the foe. Biel-Tan boasted many aspect temples -the most of any Craftworld- and the Exarchs served in them as high priests and paragons of the path. Here stood some of the finest to have ever served the great Eldar Empire Biel-Tan dreamed of restoring.

The great dome had four lesser chambers adjoining its circular sides, great winding corridors separated the lesser temples dedicated to the fallen gods of the Eldar and the heart chamber. Pressed on every side by the multitudes of lesser beings, the Eldar defenders would have to put up a staunch defense while Autarch Mauryon besieged their false colony. The symmetry of the situation was not lost on the Farseer, who was far too capable to misinterpret the patterns the universe offered him. But as in all things, the Eldar held the upper hand, if not by prophecy then by technology. Nestled within the chamber's heart was a webway gate attended by the council's way-seer. Reinforcement would be speedy and many, able to quit the front to help the temple defenders if the need arose. Without the webway, this endeavor would simply have been impossible.

Arrayed before him were peers of sorts, Eldar lost upon the path they walked. Each were forever trapped within a singular calling, a saddening fate for souls capable of experiencing infinity. Fortunately for Biel-Tan, the weaves of the skein had seen fit to draw them here together, as they were, that a greater cause be served. The runes had fallen, the die cast, the cards drawn; however the species of the galaxy described the unknowable movements of fate, this was the moment of confluence.

+Brothers. Sisters. Today were serve the Craftworld.+

The Exarchs nodded in unison. Today they would die, like they had hundreds of times before, their flesh subsumed to the many spirits which lived within them.

-/-/-/-

Meyer retched like a choking feline.

Remi cast him a side glance and sighed with shame, cursing their shared ancestry. "It's getting worst. The storm is about to break."

The insertion team had stalled. After the blazing rescue of Falk's Thunderbolts, the Eldar had scattered from the exterior plaza. Before they could regroup, Sigismund and his comrades charged in, getting lost within the lesser chamber adjoining the central hub of the temple. Speed and aggression were their only option. They had to burst through the ranks and disrupting the ritual. Surrounded and vulnerable, they had to press on and take advantage of the Imperial Guard's push. The alternative was death, theirs and that of many brave guardsmen.

Sigismund took shelter beside an oval portal leading into the concourse surrounding the temple's heart. "Is it? A shame, I wanted to linger under fire a while longer." The direness of the situation had not smoothed any of the edges characteristic of the captain and the navigator's interaction. "Fine then, you're up. Do that thing again."

Shuriken fire poured from the portal, pinning the team in place. Sola was kneeling opposite the other side of the portal. Her dire expression -and the tightly clutched _Gob Slayer_\- was held close against her chest as shuriken struck the edge of the portal. Had the reasonable yet unlikely hope that Sigismund and Remi would forestall any notion of strife been too much to ask?

The strangely ovoid architecture of the xenos temple was filled with wide open spaces, plinths, and statuesque representation of strange nimble gods. The smooth polished wraithbone was beautiful in an oddly disturbing way. Pangs of sympathy stirred deep within Remi Nostromo's chest, like the warp which only he and his kind could gaze upon; it was beautiful, graceful, and grotesque, describing everything he beheld with his true eye.

"Thing?" said Remi. "It's not a thing, Sigs." The Nostromo held out a hand to his side, which Meyer immediately filled with the nimble Eldar polearm between purging. "The profundity of its mysteries are beyond a mere unenlightened homo sapiens like yourself."

Sola jammed a finger in her ear, activating the comm bead. "Please, Remi. Just, for the love of the Omnissiah, please."

Spread along the lesser chapel's towering depictions of long lost Eldar power, the team members were exchanging fire with the regrouping dire avengers. The Eldar slipped from one cover to the other with uncanny coordination. They laid covering fire for their peers, flitting here and there, quickly multiplying their fields of fire. Soon, no cover would offer protection against the dire avengers. Plasma grenades, shuriken catapults, and impeccable precision fire were used against the infiltrators.

A great lumbering statue creaked and groaned. It broke at the ankles and crashed towards the Eldar pouring into the chamber. Great plumes of pulverized wraithbone rose from the cracked floor, half the chamber's architecture crumbling along with the statue of the goddess on her way down. The balconies above the dire avengers followed and as the thunderous impact finally passed, a handful of dire avengers found themselves overexposed. Without their supporting units, who were now on the other side of a collapsed portal, the Eldar were momentarily defeated. Vaulting over crumbled masonry and scattered rubble the dire avenger fled hounded by las and bolt fire alike. Fleet of foot and agile of movement, the scattered temple defenders disappeared into far away corridors and portals. They would use the very same avenues to return in force and renew their attacks, such were the ways of the nimble Eldar.

Scanning for the source of this beneficial outcome, Sigismund's autosenses whirred in his helmet and resolved on the hunchback silhouette of adept Pollux. The tech priest had taken to improvising and had put it to good use weakening the statue and calculating the fall's effect. The captain raised a hand in thanks for the time the adept had bought them. The gesture was mirrored by a utility mechadendrite as Pollux set herself the task of compromising more of the xenos' pantheon.

Remi was distracted by the mighty fall of the Eldar goddess. "Now would be good," Sigismund suggested as a ricochet shuriken deflected off his shoulder guard. Sola shot the captain an aggravated glance, these two would be the end of her one day.

"Fine, fine." Remi took a deep breath, centering his inner eye on the currents which would carry him. A soft hue glowered beneath his bindings, bathing his features in lurid light. Great discomfort, confusion, and physical revulsion accompanied the opening of the navigator's eye, but not for Remi, not for Meyer, not for the _Homo navigo_.

Time bled to a stop, and Remi was godly once more. He slipped across the streams of the empyrean. The psychic turmoil originating from the temple tossed and turned him, great ripping static to his mutated senses. It was a struggle for even his mind to understand, to interpret. Remi did not disappear into the warp, it took great sorcery or ancient technology to do so. What he truly did, was use his ability to perceive time to step along its currents, to exist both in the material plane but also be affected by the shadowy realm which pressed coldly against the skin of the universe. But to everyone else, he simply disappeared.

His altered steps took him through the portal and beyond the hunkered dire avengers which halting their progress. With a simple thought, which hid the complexity of the forces at work, Remi materialized.

"Now!" yelled Remi in his comm bead.

The executioner polearm sliced down, parting the flesh of the first Eldar with a stroke. A few graceful steps forward and another dire avenger met his end at the end of Remi's pilfered weapon. Had the navigator not been blessed by his genome with unnatural agility, this ambush would have been doomed to fail, for the Eldar were a spritely foe. But Remi knew the risks, he never agreed to anything without a dependable trump card. The fault would never lay in him, but rather his allies. Well, one of them, at least.

Sigismund charged into the concourse storm bolter blazing. Such was the furious rate of fire, the hammer's clicked on an empty chamber in under five strides. The hail of mass reactive bolts chewed up the cover the dire avengers were using. Dirt and wraithbone were flung into the air, along with the blood splattered remains of two Eldar. Remi hissed as wraithbone, blown free under Sigismund's gratuitous shooting, slice across his flesh as shrapnel. The navigator bit down on a curse as he slid out of the field of fire. The rest of the defenders were torn between the charging bull at their front and the slicing snake at their back. The greatest threat however, was the patient facto.

Kneeling partly out of the portal's oval arch, Sola raised her devastating rifle. Its machine spirit spoke to her, omniscope quickly clicking to the best setting and magnification. As one, the rifle's machine spirit and Sola's cogitator assisted mind communed in mathematical prayer, the result was blessed with surgical precision. The facto was no expert marksman but the secrets of the Omnissiah, the range of her shots, and the infallible potential of her weapon achieved the same effect. Hesitant dire avengers collapsed, center mass ruined by the anti-material bolt shells. Within a handful of seconds, as many Eldar were slain. The Eldar were broken before Sigismund even jumped into the fray.

The entirety of the battle played out under Sola's keen eye, mind effortlessly tracking the situation as Sigismund and Remi fought the Eldar. A tall crested one, their leader she knew, slipped between them and wielded his diresword to expert results. Dividing the two human fighters with swings of his hefty two handed weapon, and twisting about the blade in such a way as to never falter, never stagger, the Exarch trapped Sigismund within a group of dire avengers and then singled out Remi.

Sigismund could handle himself, his foes ill equipped to pierce his power armor, so Sola lined up a shot but the dazzling movements of the dire avenger Exarch foiled her aim. He dipped or danced, and even somersaulted acrobatically making any shot as likely to hit Remi as his opponent. Behind her in the rubble strewed chapel, the enemy had rallied again and Devros' loud banter signaled the start of another push.

Remi was pressed in a way he did not enjoy. His lithe steps carried him over the smooth floor as he escaped the Exarch's flurry of blows. His robes billowed behind him and were singed by the Eldar's power fielded weapon, slowly leaving them expensive tatters. Many times, Remi swung the executioner blade to ward off the nimble killer, but he was only buying time. The Exarch was no fool, either having been warned by his peers of the navigator's power, or simply adoption an erratic and ephemeral combat style by instinct. Remi could barely keep his eyes on the fast moving blur, let alone concentrate long enough to unleash his deadly gaze. Defensive strikes, reposts, and agile dodges were all that kept Remi alive. That, and his ability to match the Eldar's speed. His miraculous translucent blood regenerated his flesh as quickly as it nourished his mind, and though Remi was very thankful for it, that too was only buying him time. Many navigators were crippled mutated husks, but not Remi. Not yet. And if he survived this fight, he would never allow such a thing to pass, his research was only the beginning. His mutations were elevations, not sins, and he would unlock their secrets.

Remi's distracted thoughts gave the Exarch his opportunity, and as the navigator deflected the dire sword's stroke -power fields licking at each other in ethereal flames- the Exarch pivoted to unbalance Remi. The following elbow hit Remi in the throat, the navigator's weapon clattered to the floor as he instinctively reached for his bruised flesh. Poised to strike the finishing blow, the Exarch paused as his shimmer shield burst into azure life. By the time Remi had scrambled after his weapon and assumed a defensive stance, the Exarch was gone.

Sola blinked and the Eldar exarch was barreling straight for her. In the same motion, he vaulted over his own men, and using the Sigismund's shoulder as an acrobatic prop, propelled himself into a graceful cartwheeling arc over the rest of the obstacles in his way. One breath later, he was unlimbering his deceptively weightless diresword from his shoulder and bringing it down in a killing arc, its clinging power field describing a luminous arc.

The facto rolled out of the way, tucking her rifle to her stomach. It bought her a second longer to live. Recovering in a crouch, she was defenseless to stop the masterful artist of death from dealing his _coup the gras_. She was, but Meyer wasn't.

The thin, hairless navigator first flung Remi's snack satchel at the striking Exarch. It was promptly severed in half, its contents falling in flaming tatters to the ground. It had unsettled the swordsman however. The Eldar were fast, their nervous system keen and responsive, it was what kept them so light on their feet. It also made them very sensitive to surprise stimuli; such as a howling navigator, heedless of his own safety, throwing himself at the Exarch.

Precious seconds were bought as Meyer flung himself bodily at the Exarch, or rather at his blade. In a quick motion, the exarch reflexively plunged his diresword deep within Meyer's bowels. The Eldar struggled, his expressionless helm conveying confusion. The navigator gripped at the swordman's arm with pained groans, locking himself into the deathly embrace. It seemed the creature was intent on lingering on the blade, even though his insides cooked.

Meyer finally slipped from the weapons edge to collapse into a puddle, but not before a horrified Sola could slip out of the exarch's grasp. The Eldar crouched into a low combat stance as his helm's glossy lenses took in the newly evolving situation. The dire avengers assaulting Remi and Sigismund had been dispatched, the two blade men now carefully encroaching onto the Eldar. They rallied around the female, just like the suicidal mutant had moments before. Behind him, the dispersed rearguard of mon-keigh were now noticing his presence. Chastity, horrified, hurried to Sola's side, burning coals of shame lighting her every gesture. Soon, the humans would focus their fire and the Eldar Exarch knew only too well what would happen. The spirit stones on his armor warmed with ancient wisdom, the souls of his predecessors forming a gestalt with his own. With them, he had lived and died for a thousand years. He knew that defeat loomed, and how it had to end.

The Eldar nodded in acknowledgment of his defeat. "You have been a most persistent foe, humans. I regret that I will not witness your defeat first hand."

And with that, the Exarch spun his sword in a flourish before charging into the teeth of his foes. For every second counted, now more than ever.

….

"Blast through that wall!" bellowed the Brigadier-Colonel. He raised his sword to indicate which one as enemy fire swarmed around him, leaving him miraculously untouched. The Guardsmen surrounding him offered the enemy their retort.

Colonel Brisbane was a stone throw away directing his escort platoon. The heavy infantry troopers dissuaded the last in a long line of probing attacks with well drilled las fire. They rendered Misfit's role redundant but the eccentric command squad still kept a sharp eye out for Eldar trickery. The enemy melted away from the Imperial rallying point, disappearing behind the curvature of the concourse. The large throughway was essentially a circular ring surrounding the main Eldar structure. Perhaps it was just a nice piece of design, encouraging visitors to enjoy the scenic route along the temple's halls, but the Eldar were using it as a sort of inner curtain wall, forcing invaders to run a gauntlet of defensive chokeholds before meeting their objective.

It was high time the Imperials stopped playing it the xenos' way.

A unit of troopers acknowledged the Brigadier-Colonel's command and set themselves up against the inner wall of the concourse. Accosting Brisbane's protection detail, they gathered half a dozen metla bombs to breach the wall and cut straight to the heart of things.

Frederick Lancer slipped his headset from his well-groomed head and leaned in towards his commanding officer. "Sir, H and J Company are pushing west and east along the concourse, encountering heavy resistance. I Company signals little more than probing attack at our rear in the annex. Captain Cainhart has sent a platoon to scout along the exterior of the structure, but has received no signs of life from them since…"

Trevin nodded, letting his mind draw a map of his forces and the surroundings. Brisbane stomped over, clearly having heard the exchange.

"Infuriating gits, these xenos. Always nipping and biting at our heels, never showing their faces long enough to get a fair thrashing." The mustachioed officer scratched at the patch of discolored skin on his neck, his recent wound having blotched his rider's tan. "At least the orks had the decency of staying put when you fired at them." Brisbane trust the tip of his sword into the floor before resting his hands on the basket pommel. "I rather enjoyed fighting the orks."

"The Emperor's foes are many and foul, dear Brisbane." Trevin's words were interrupted before he could say another. The concourse echoed with a distant warning, the vox mimicking the cry.

"Banshee!" came Captain Frost's twin warnings, overlapping queerly.

"Better reinforce her," suggested Trevin to an already swearing Brisbane.

The Colonel drew half of the platoon around him. "Knowing Frost sir, she's not the one who will need reinforcements," Brisbane said before setting out into the eastern concourse. Hand to his bead, he was already ordering Frost into an ordered retreat to draw the slicing banshees into his waiting guns. The female aspect warriors were always eager to chase down a routed foe. It would be their downfall. Brisbane hurriedly disappeared down the corridor, the battle raging a few hundred meters away out of sight.

Augustus threw Steld a glance, she was hard at work as always. She and the company medics had gathered together and were in the midst of treatment and triage. Troopers helped hobbling comrades from their respective fronts to the rallying point. The field operation post was the last hope for many of the troopers. It was disheartening to see how many loyal followers of the God-Emperor were laying there, bloodied and moaning their death pangs. The Eldar defense boasted far too many boots on the ground. Trevin had come with a full battalion, nearly six-hundred rifles. Even with the landing casualties, it should have been an even match. The xenos were being reinforced somehow and without putting a stop to it, it was very likely the attack would fail.

"Fire in the hole!" hollered the demolition sergeant as he stepped into cover to echo his warning a second time. He never made it to three.

In a clatter of fluctuating air pressure and thunder strikes, a dozen Eldar appeared in the midst of the demolition team. They unleashed sprays of monofilament wires from their death spinners, or sliced the flatfooted troopers with curving forearm mounted power blades. The remnants of Brisbane's protection detail were cut down terrifyingly fast. The soldiers' cries rang as Trevin drew his saber.

"Misfit!" commanded the hero of Kursk, his call barely finished before a blistering cloud of lit promethium blanketed a score of warp spiders and their yet to expire victims. No true veteran doubted the doom which hung over the gutted troopers, but the eagerness of Corvin's attack left a bitter taste in Trevin's mouth.

Plasma and bolt rounds joined the mix, striking down the ambushing Eldar or forcing them into rapid jumps. Those caught in the opening blaze simply disappeared, warping to safety. An unlucky warp spider teleported in the sights of Melot, he was incinerated by a well-placed plasma shot. Most simply slipped out of sight.

Lancer was firing wildly, his shaking hands making his shots erratic, matching nonetheless the dodging bobs and weaves of the warp spiders. His vox set exploded in sparks as he stumbled and fell forward, a large half melted gash showing the machine spirit's innards to the world. For a moment still, a skulking warp spider could be seen behind the falling guardsman before he vanished in an implosion of light and sound, his power blade sated. The many amber colored spirit stones adorning this warp spider's aspect armor hinted at his skill, and his importance.

Headless of the molecular razor filaments floating in the air, shot by ever displacing Eldar, Steld quickly charged into the fray and threw herself onto Lancer. She covered his vulnerable body with hers, bolt pistol bucking in her hand as she left explosive trails behind the dodging Eldar in her sight.

The Kursk survivors were one in battle. Where the Eldar benefited from heightened reflexes and enshrined battle doctrine, the veterans functioned as a fluid organism born of maddening necessity. Here, in the crucible of war, the grueling nightmares which haunted their battle addled brains impeded them not, but drove them to lengths only imaginable by desperate organism. The urge to survive for one more day granted them speed and strength, for every moment was precious for the short lived.

Blanketing flames denied the warp spiders' killing blows, drawing their ire to the blood thirsty trooper wielding the flamer. One warp spider materialized behind Corvin's line of sight ready to cut him to ribbon, only to have his head vaporized by a maximized plasma blast. Melot dropped his gun, vented thermals scalding his arm and face. With one eye screwed shut, he drew his pistol and carried on firing. The swift Exarch reappeared and prepared to intercept Trevin, whose raised sword was brought in defense of the his prone comrades, but was dissuaded by Melot's persistent shots.

Nonetheless, Trevin was struck, a fatal blow turned into a grazing- albeit painful- wound before his assailant teleported away. His carapace armor bled melted ceramite and Kevlar as he stood above Steld and Lancer. Power blades met and clashed as the commander turned wildly upon himself trying to ward off the Exarch's darting attacks.

Having proven himself a thorn in their sides, a pair of vindictive warp spiders coordinated their attacks against Melot. Spritely and lean, the gambler had always benefited from a propensity for fitness, which was now tested to the brink. Melot dodged the blades by rolling aside, surviving more by luck than sheer skill. That is, until the Corvin powered into the melee. The wolfish trooper moved in close and locked a warp spider's arm mid-strike before trusting his blade violently into its side. Corvin did not wonder if Eldar had kidneys, or if they were at the same place as his; he stabbed and stabbed and stabbed until little but a red ruin was left of the xenos' flank.

Suddenly finding himself with the tables turned, the warp spider Exarch signaled a retreat. They vanished before any more of their numbers could be set upon by blade or bolt. The momentum of the ambush had bled from the Eldar. They had met a foe with sharper teeth than theirs. As quickly as they had appeared, the spiders quit the field, leaving battered and wounded soldiers behind. Blood still pumping at a maddening staccato, Misfit moved guardedly to secure their wounded until it was clear the battle had been won.

"Corvin," swallowed Trevin, his mouth dry after the engagement. "Make sure those bombs go off. We rip their damned hearts out and end this!"

The wolfish trooper grunted and kept his large knife at the ready, bloodied to the hilt. He stalked towards the demolition charges, body tense and ready for another ambush.

Melot was touching his scalded face, the flesh flaking his leaving fingers in a bleeding film. "Don't do that," Steld ordered. She was now freeing lancer of his vox set, checking for wounds and spinal damage. The shock of the blow and the sparking vox set had knocked the corporal out. He was coming to, jarred into a nervous scramble for his bolt gun. Steld pulled him away from the weapon with effort. Trevin dropping to a knee to help reorient the shell-shocked soldier.

"Frederick, its ok, calm down. Lancer, do you hear me? Lancer!" Freddy was a spaz at the best of time, and this was possibly the worst. The medic administered a shock treatment of her own, slapping the befuddled trooper into subservience. He quietly stilled, bewilderment on his face.

"Good news, Freddy," Trevin smiled as reassuringly as he could. "You survived another one."

Frederick's one good eye focused on his commander and friend, while other sought to hide itself from scrutiny. "Have we? Good. Oh heavenly Emperor. That's mighty good to hear." Trevin and Steld exchange a look, less about Lancer and more about the state of the squad. The field medic had come to know the survivors well. It differed from the way they knew each other, for her sanity had remained unbent by their ordeal, but she had come to know enough about their eccentricities to be a decent judge.

"We good?" asked Trevin, looking at the injuries his squad sported.

Steld gave the command squad another questing glance. Melot was absently scratching at his uniform sleeve, the boiled skin underneath undoubtedly coming undone. "Lancer will be fine with a sedative. Corvin might take a few minutes to be coherent again and Melot, well, he needs to get bandaged up and balmed with soothing gel or he'll rip his skin apart and probably die of septicemia later on. And then there's you."

"Me?" frowned the Brigadier-Colonel.

"Gus, you have an open would with half melted ceramite fused to it." Steld pointed to his side where the war spider had nearly done him in, if not for Melot. Trevin stretched and lifted his arm to inspect the damage. There wasn't much to see, but he could well imagine.

"I can't afford a balm like morphia until this operation is over. Do you have something else, something that will keep my head clear?"

Steld snorted as Lancer got back on his feet. The corporal was looking about for his vox set, sporting a decidedly dejected expression when he found it. "Firstly, you have been on so many stims these last two weeks that I can barely give you another dosage without blowing your heart. Secondly, you need the kind of surgery I can't do in the field. Thirdly, Josephine will kill me if you die on my watch."

Trevin would have smiled at the thought of Josephine's scolding, but his blood still stirred. He rose from his knee, pain and fatigue lancing through him alongside his newly received wound. "Good thing I'm your commanding officer then."

A rising pitch culminated into a shrilling climax. It was followed by the detonation of melta bombs. The air rippled as it was displaced violently, vaporizing the wraithbone wall and making the air tingle with half placed scents. As the warm thermals washed over the assembled command squad, the unit turned towards the large glowing opening in the wall. The blast had skirted their position. Corvin stood with his back to the breach, confused at his comrades piercing glares.

"Fire in the hole…?" guessed Corvin.

"Fire in the hole," reproached Melot. The smoke of his newly lit lho stick irritated the left side of his flash-burned face, which was quickly thickening with angry welts.

"Fire in the hole," grinned the youngest of the band, his mad smile devoid of shame or guilt.

….

They moved like shadows along the once abandoned halls of the world-spirit's temple. Isendrad risked much by leading this counter attack, but fate require no less of him. At his right, Mehvina the banshee Exarch of the forgiving blade shrine, led her sister warriors; at his left, the warlock Laethorn of the seer council dedicated his mind to the shrouding rune of concealment. The three multiplied the already terrifying strength of the daughters of Khaine.

The attack force rounded the curving concourse at break neck speed, sprinting headlong into the enemies they knew would be advancing towards the eastern entrance of the heart chamber. The oafish cry of a mon-keigh female pierced the air.

"Banshee!"

The human soldiers raised their ineffective las weapons and began to fire madly at the advancing Eldar group. The runes cast their protective aegis upon their subjects. The mon-keighs' aim was terrible, made even worst by their fractured sight, the rune's power clouding their minds and muddling their bodies' reactions. Not a single shot hit the weaving Eldar as they crashed into the first rank of soldiers.

Isendrad felled the first of his foes with a blindingly fast cut of his witchblade. His powerful psychic mind ran along the blade's keen edge and parted flesh and armor alike. When the blade inevitably bit, it released the primitive souls of its victims into the warp. But Isendrad's skill with a blade was second only to his psychic mastery. The Farseer reached out, fingers grasping invisible filaments of fate, and yanked them into being. At his whim, mon-keigh warriors stepped into the paths of reaping blades or missed their mark, resulting in friendly fire.

Mehvina and her sisters screeched, the banshee's moniker well earned, blasting the crude senses of their enemies as well as stunning their minds. Helpless, the soldiers died in great swaths as the green plumed banshees struck with lightning speed. The Exarch cut left and right with her mirror blades, a dervish of cold naked pain amidst a blossoming flower of blood. Mehvina reached the enemy leader in the blink of an eye. The man, a junior officer leading four times as many mon-keigh as the banshees decimated them, raised a chortling saw toothed blade in defiance. The unfortunate soul lived long enough to witness his own dismemberment at the hands of the prenaturally quickened Exarch.

Fresh pungent blood splattered Mehvina's naked face. Unlike her sisters, the exarch fought unhelmed, the runes of her aspect carved into her elegant sloping forehead. The stinging taste was ecstatic for the daughter of the bloody handed Khaine. Bayonets drawn, the guards of the officer rallied around the momentarily stationary Eldar, ready to avenge their master.

Eldritch lightning surrounded the smirking banshee, detonating angrily amongst the poised mon-keigh. Gore fountained as the dismembered remains of the bodyguards clattered to the ground. By then the high priestess of Kaela Mensha Khaine was already on the move, finishing the last remains of the human platoon.

Laethorn lowered his hand, the destructor rune of his gauntleted fist still blazing hot with ethereal energy. He reached out with his mind to Isendrad. +Mehvina is blood crazed Farseer, I will not be able to support her much longer.+  
Isendrad sidestepped a charging sergeant, the evasion easily followed by a downward cut of his witchblade, decapitating his attacker with a flourish which cleansed the naked witchblade of the blood it had accumulated. +They follow their aspect, it is at it should be, but I do sense the waters clouding. We must hurry!"

The seers dispatched the last of the guardsmen surrounding them and sprinted away after the charging banshees. The women warriors leapt over obstacles and rolled to their feet without ever slowing down, the acrobatics as easy as drawing breath to them. Though only a dozen meters separated the daughters of Khaine and their seer support, the banshees had already begun keening anew. A second platoon of soldiers, thrice their numbers, were fleeing or in bloody ribbons by the time Isendrad and Laethorn managed to catch Mehvina and touch her battle fevered mind.

+Exarch, we must be wary, I sense the foe prepares a trap.+

Though the thought was formed and sent, it was too little too late. The banshees pursued the routed foe, pistols spitting mono sharpened shuriken as they caught up with their enemies, sword held high to strike. The corridor filled with billowing clouds of flame, blanketing the whole of the concourse from wall to wall and catching a handful of the leading aspect warriors in its wake.

The fires had not yet died that blinding, actinic light spat fat spears of plasma fire towards the remains of the foiled Eldar charge. The banshees ducked and rolled, pirouetted and slid into cover; artist and dancers whose art was death acted before conscious thought could form, quicker than the quickest of Eldar. The few sisters who were left momentarily wrong footed were cut down by the massed las fire that followed. When the surprise passed, the source of the sudden turnabout was clear to see.

Rows of well-ordered guardsmen appeared out of the dissipating heat haze. Flamer wielding troopers hurried from their hidden places back to their lines, having sprung their ambush perfectly. Plasma gun troopers stood amongst the rows, weapons whining as magnetic cores struggled to keep the fire of newborn suns in their bosoms. Riflemen, nearly a hundred strong on their bellies, knees, or standing proud, faced the now diminished Eldar counter charge. A broad hairy lipped human stood amongst them, but first amongst the ranks was a fiery female whose voice rang with vindictive spite, now ready to avenge her men.

"For the 3rd!" howled Captain Frost as her cavalry saber sliced the air.

Mehvina stood her ground. The Exarch had followed her path to the end. The desperate fury of the temple's defense had been too much to resist. Her lavender aspect armor, its spirits stones warming in gestalt sympathy, now was now drenched in the crimson of her enemies. Blood lust had finally claimed her, like it had had all Exarchs of her shrine. Mehvina drew her blades back and charged, howling her fury at the incoming storm of burning light. The high priestess died with her sisters, guide and paragon; a reminder to those lost on the paths.

Isendrad quickly reached out and occluded Laethorn's fate as well as his own. The Great Wheel forgot they existed for a brief moment, secreted like the divination runes of Morai-Heg's satchel. The flurry of light swept all life from the concourse, brave sisters standing for a moment more in defiance before falling in charred heaps. Isendrad reknitted the pilfered fates anew, reappearing unharmed from their temporal exile. The Farseer sunk to his knees in his exhaustion. The psychic labour of occluding fate was such that even masters of the skein paid a heavy price. It was a simple thing in comparison to cut and weave the fates of others, but quite another to cut oneself from the skein and retain enough will to stich yourself anew.

Laethorn blinked away his confusion as time and space bent itself back into shape. Quickly seeing the female mon-keigh raise her saber anew, he splintered his mind and called upon the executioner rune. Even as his body glided across the blackened and bloodied floor to lift Isendard to his feet, a shadowy doppelganger slipped from the warlock's shadow and sprinted for the enemy officer.

The shadow drew the ire of the soldier. Disciple gave way and troopers fired before they were ordered. Had their lives been threatened, the well-drilled and proud Persephonains would have stood their ground and accepted their deaths well before disobeying orders. But it was not the rank-and-file who were threatened, nor their sergeants or their black clad keepers. The shadow aimed its darkened sword at the heart of their formation, moments away from skewering Captain Frost. It was for the sake of Lady Amelia Ghermana Frost of the Jhornum Marches, the company's noble born mistress, that they fired their weapons to end the shadowy executioner.

The lady was saved by the blistering conflagration seconds before her doom befell her. And though the soldiers rejoiced, loyal soldier one and all, their joy was curtailed by the fire in their mistress 'eyes; for the Eldar had escaped.

…

Captain Frost bellowed for her company's fire discipline to be maintained. But it was too late, the foe had used the small window of opportunity to quit the field.

"Philly frakking farm feds!" spat Frost, slipping her saber into its scabbard angrily. "The next man to fire without my say will be subject to the Lord Commissar's mercy! Do I make myself clear?!"

The company's remains, a hundred strong, saluted their captain. In each and every trooper's eye was an unrepentant glint. They would gladly face the wrath of the baleful eyed Otto for their mistress.

"Urias, Jenkins, take point! We press on!" ordered Frost. The two lieutenant in question made the sign of the Aquila and gathered their platoons to move further along the concourse.

Colonel Brisbane watched with a quiet grin. A good officer knew not to undermine his subordinate, and so he let Frost have her say. When she was finished he stepped by her side, a warm hand on her armored shoulder guard.

"Good men you have, your house gave the 3rd fine soldiers."

"Wastes of skin, the lot of them. A stable boy could follow my orders better," Frost grumbled. "I apologize for their lack of discipline Lord Brisbane."

The one time Duke chuckled and patted her back, the gesture more familiar than his position should allow. Brisbane had taken a liking to the Fiery Frost. "It would have killed you if they hadn't."

"That's none of their concern, Colonel. Their lot is to follow orders. To fight and die in the Emperor's Imperial Guard." The captain turned to face her commanding officer. She said the words the Munitorum had drilled into her, but the truth was plain to see. The Brigadier-Colonel had toasted to the Regiment's founding with a clear message to his officers, one she agreed with wholeheartedly.

"_We die for the Emperor, but for no one else"_

Brisbane gave her a playful wink and straightened up. He stabbed a thick finger into his ear, Frost's expression let him know she was hearing the same message.

"Company orders!" came the ponce voice of vox operator Lancer. "Mian chamber breached. I company proceeding into the breach. H Company is to double time to the eastern chamber entrance. J has already reached its objective. Be advised mobility and visibility with the main chamber is impaired by a… forest. That is all," incredulity accompanied the end of the message.

"We're late," complained Frost.

"I'm never late Frost. That would be terribly gauche," Brisbane corrected, fingers smoothing his thick graying mustache. "The heroes always arrive at the most opportune moment.

Brisbane let Frost do the honor. With a sweeping gesture she ordered a full advance. The two officers began to jog towards their objective, their soldiers in tow. "Let's hope we're the heroes then," remarked Frost.

….

"I don't like this," said Barr as he turned his head left and right. They were in a sort of arboretum, wild flora covered everything in shades of green and muted colors. It wasn't the greenery that unsettled the storm trooper however.

"That's cause we're being tracked, lad." Devros had joined the troopers in their forward reconnaissance. The lords and ladies had stayed behind, having taken the brunt of the dire avenger Exarch's last stand. The Nostromo especially, who had taken quite a few mortal wounds. Strangely enough, the mouthy one seemed to recover by the minute, a gift not shared by his manservant. Mutants were an unholy bunch, though some were more likable than others. The mouthy Nostromo clearly wasn't one of them.

"I was afraid of that," muttered the steely sergeant. "Reminds me of the outpost when-" Barr was interrupted as a shape burst out of the foliage. In truth, they were half a dozen shapes, all poised to end the scouting party. Nius spotted his would be killer and tackled him to the group, but not before getting a faceplate full of shuriken shots. Pennette twisted on herself, throwing her sudden attacker over her shoulder and quickly dropping onto the ambusher with her combat knife. Even prone, the striking scorpion lashed out. Miraculously, the gutting thrust of Pennette's attacker was blunted by her armor and skidded off. Her knife found the ambushing foe in the neck, red vitae bubbling from the wound.

Barr, tense of his feet, quickly dodged a sweeping chain sword that would have taken his head from his shoulders. The sergeant rolled onto the floor fired from his prone position, blasting the striking scorpion full in the chest. "I hate being right." Barr regained his feet and was quickly sent on the defensive as two camouflaged Eldar filled his immediate vicinity with buzzing blades.

A few feet away, the twist-catcher was having at his ambusher with a gutter brawler's finesse. Devros had ripped his cloak from his shoulders and used it to catch the striking scorpion's weapon with the xeno mesh. The fabric caught, twisting around the chain sword and offering the barrel-chested bounty hunter his opening. With a quickness unusual for men of his size, Devros stepped into closer quarters and spun on himself, cracking his elbow into the Eldar's elongated helm with all his momentum. The armor held, but the warrior was momentarily stunned. A moment was all Devros needed. The twist catcher grabbed the thin alien's neck and threw him bodily over his shoulder. With the xenos dazed and on its back, Devros quick drew his pistols and filled the prone body with exploding bolts.

Nius rolled with his attacker in the bush, elbows and knees trying to pummel his foe's sides. The scorpion's chain sword hummed a vicious hymn as it approached Nius' vulnerable armor joints. The Eldar's head was suddenly snapped back and a bloodied blade ran across the supple neck joint, spraying warm blood over Nius' eye lenses. The prone trooper struggled to clear the lenses of his helmet of their obstruction, only to see Pennette nimble's silhouette standing before him. She yanked his forearm firmly to get him on his feet and back into the fight.

"Emperor's balls they're fast. I didn't see it hit me." Nius complained drawing his weapon to the ready.

"That's because you suck, Nius," quipped Pennette. Her knife was already in its holster, hanging grip down from her chest plate.

Shuriken whistled their way, splitting them apart as they dodged their separate way. They quickly drew a bead on their attacker, a lone aspect warrior running interference while the sergeant was singled out. The troopers fired together, riddling the scorpion with hellgun fire, Pennette's reaction time a fraction of second faster than Nius.

A quick head count left two Eldar dancing circles around Barr. The troopers and Devros closed rank and began reluctantly shooting at the striking scorpions. Most shot went wide, the trio of fighters too close to one another to risk more. Barr was on the defensive, dodging and weaving, using his now wrecked hellgun to bat away chain swords whistling by his head.

The message got through however, the Eldar realized their ambush had failed and that the wise course of action was retreat. The scorpions rained a storm of blows onto the sergeant and maneuvered themselves to escape. They finally dropped a pair of monofilament grenades to cover their retreat and sprinted into the forest's depths.

The scouts threw themselves flat, having noticed the ovoid shapes tumbling to the ground. Barr, with far less options, flung himself behind the first tree he could. In an instant, the vegetation where Barr had stood was torn to shreds. Light airy strings glinted with smoky hues as they floated to the earthy soil. Devros stood far outside the blast range and marveled as he watched a wisp thin filament slice through a wrist thick branch on its way down. The branch had barely slowed its fall.

"That's right, you cowards! Run away, it's what your good at!" Barr hollered breathlessly. He picked himself from the ground and rested on his knees, catching his breath. The sergeant counted the members of his squad, a habit long etched into his mind, and was relieved to see he hadn't lost anyone to the ambush.

"Man, you can really boogie sarge." Nius chuckled, his shoulders heaving slightly.

Barr took off his helmet, wiping sweat from his brow. He really had dance to their tune. "Shut up razor head, do something useful and check your equipment or something," ordered the sergeant. Nius tilted his head in confusion. Pennette pointed her finger at his face, signaling the whole of it sardonically. Nius took off his helmet and noticed for the first time the mono sharpened slivers of metal jammed into it. Sticky blood covered the side of his face. An inch or so more and he would have been dead. As it was, thin cuts bled profusely. Nius cast away his helmet.

Pennette swaggered over to one of the xenos corpse, letting off a round in its face and leaving a charred hole behind. "That was for Ferraro, you fairy frakkers."

The troopers exchanged glances, taking a moment to remember their lost squad mate.

Devros got the hint, but they couldn't waste too much time. "Do you feel that?" he asked no one in peculiar.

"Yeah," said Pennette. "We must be close to their little ritual, I can feel my skin crawl."

"No. Well yeah. That too lass, that too. But I mean the scratching at the back of your throat." As if in response, the twist catcher hawked a phlegmy wad of spit.

Nius chuckled, "Pennette's too use to that feeling to notice."

The springy female trooper gestured vulgarly at her mate.

"Stow it," snapped Barr, now making sure his power coupling were well tied to his hell pistol, his rifle ruined. "I can feel it too, what is it?"

"Last I felt this little tingle," Devros said as he walked about, fishing a small compass from his harness of gadgets. "We had a friendly little leaf eater with us." The bounty hunter watched the needle in his compass spin and wiggle. He didn't understand much of what Lady Sola mumbled when it came to the Eldar's techno heresy. But he did know what a magnetic field did to a compass, and remembered what she had said. Devros wandered for a few seconds, his companions darting looks to one another. Halting beside a rather empty bit of vegetation, Devros kicked out tentatively, stubbing his foot on something unseen. He grinned.

"Well?" asked Barr impatiently. They were in enemy territory, they couldn't afford to stay so stationary.

Devros leaned against the invisible webway, appearing to stand at a strangely canted angle.

"What the gak is that?" asked Nius, as pools of softly glowing blue and white lights emanated from where Devros interfered with the holo-field.

"I don't know," grinned Pennette, reaching for a melta charge. "But I'm gonna blow it up."

….

The temple defenders had been pushed back to the heart chamber. Ever onward, wadding in their own blood, the mon-keigh marched. Hundreds had been slain, a great deal more than the aspect warriors and yet, the humans were unrelenting. The Eldar had chosen to stand their ground however. The clash agitated the world-spirit, whose primordial mind now resided near the bloodshed, and threated to whip it into mad excitement. Like a beast smelling the blood of its kin, the crystal node thrummed with anger and made reigning in its focus a costly affair.

Caille's shoulders slumped in her meditative trance. The world-spirit lashed at her, its frantic energy bleeding away from the brewing storm. Her exhausted mind lulled it back into a state of fitful rest, drawing it into the air above and away from the blood below.

+Caille, we draw the phantom's blade. Be warned, the ritual is yours to fuel. The council is called to fight. How much longer must we keep them at bay?+

Isendrad's mind-voice was harsh and powerful, but it too seemed drawn and taxed. Caille's own mind-voice was little more than a fleeting whisper of a thought.

\+ Moments more, brothers. I nearly have it. The world-spirit is nearly drawn from its womb.+

Heavy steps shook the ground as the Wraithlord patrolled around the crystal node, his lesser kind already in the heart of the verdant flora, warring with the human. The call of the spirit-seer was powerful, and all the wraithbone constructs obeyed it, all but the towering walker whose soul was lucid enough to stay. But this, Caille did not notice. Nor the disappearance of the way-seer, or the departure of the council. All of her considerable attention was focused on layering the patterns of song and light she sung to the world-spirit from the depths of her soul.

Many of the Exarchs were gone, their aspect warriors defeated. Only Filialal and his striking scorpions still remained, ambushing the humans wandering the forest. Of the warlocks. Only Laethorn fought on, and with Umav the spirit-seer and her wraithguard charges as the last line of defense, Caille was suddenly very vulnerable. The weight of a world rested on her slender shoulders. Despite this, she knew the Maiden world's fate would be decided by forces outside her control. Fate's great torrents could always be influenced, but never truly diverted. Every Farseer knew that in the end, Destiny always ran its course. This knowledge was cruelest for those who could scry the great patterns, for they knew that lives were often lived not for the fulfillment of their own destiny, but that others.

Whose destiny was truly being played now? Were the Eldar dying for humanity's future, or was humanity dying for the Eldar's? Did it truly mattered who claimed victory today?

Fate was indeed a twisted weave.

…

The lightning came from the forest once more. Where it landed, always meeting before ripping the fabric of time and space, the earth itself rose in great plumes of dirt. Guardsmen died in scores. Reports claimed that strange lithe skeletons of Eldar design were responsible. They hefted large bore canons which spat the warp lightning. They were stalwart in their attacks and never flinched.

Rapid strikes against them had only ended in severe casualties as a trio of witches defended them, as well as a score of guerrilla fighters. The Imperial forces had, in their numerical advantage, split and attacked from all sides. Unfortunately, the Eldar forces had bleed them nearly dry and so the guardsmen could not dislodge the last obstacle to their victory.

"It's the rogue trader, sir. He claims to have eyes on the ritual site," reported Lancer.

The Brigadier-Colonel crawled closer to the vox, traversing the short distance from the lip of the lightning blown crater to his friend. A dozen improvised foxholes were filled with the remains of the battalion dedicated to this angle of attack. The Eldar seemed happy to bide their time, which Trevin knew served their endgame. It explained why the Eldar weren't pushing the Imperial force out of the heart chamber.

Lancer handed the vox horn to Trevin. "The attack has stalled Lord Lucius. Good men died getting you to where you are, so by the Emperor, tell me it was worth it."

"It has," came Sigismund's voice. "You have done an admirable job Trevin. Stay put and let us handle this last bit. The dynasty thanks you. I thank you."

There was a sense of finality to the rogue trader's words that Trevin found suspicious. "There's a problem, isn't it?"

…

"None whatsoever. This fight's as good as won. Sigismund out." The vox signal chopped as the scion ended it.

"As good as won, heh?" Pennette adjusted her weight, the entire team laying belly down in the brush. Before them was a small clearing with a large crystal obelisk, an Eldar witch sitting at its base. More to the point was the giant walker keeping watch, a large scimitar in its bony gasp and long fluted canons on its shoulders. Its large featureless head was a bulbous mass reminiscent of the Eldar war helms. Despite its strange disproportions, the walker looked lethal.

"No sense disheartening the Brigadier-Colonel now, is there?" Said Sigismund.

"Well, the larger they are…" began Nius.

"The harder they hit," reminded Barr.

"That too," conceded Nius.

Remi sighed loudly. "Well that's it. I'm going back to Meyer. He has what's left of my supplies and I'm not dying here, especially not sober." The robed navigator began to rise, encumbered with his polearm and shuriken canon now that he had to carry them himself. It was all Meyer's fault. He had gotten hurt, which forced them to leave him behind in the protection of adept Pollux. Remi would have to walk all the way back through the concourse, all because the spineless fool couldn't keep himself out of harm's way. At least he had been useful in protecting Sola. Which coincidentally confirmed his suspicion about Chastity's incompetence. After all, that had clearly been within her remit. This entire troop of fools was questionably competent, and Remi didn't like those odds.

Sola pulled him back down by the hem of his robes. She gave him a pleading look which he returned with an exasperated roll of his eyes, but eventually settled back into an undignified crouch.

"We need plan," said Sola earnestly.

"We need a gakkin' miracle my lady." Devros looked immediately ashamed that he had sworn in the vice factotum's presence. He rubbed the ridge of his nose with dirt stained fingers, looking away with his one good eye.

"Snipe the Eldar and run like the warp is on our tails," suggested the power armored Chastity.

"No good. You saw how those fancy Eldar sported deflector shields, good ones too." For all his vapid exploits, Sigismund had a knack for hitting the nail of the head. "Whatever she's doing its taking up all her attention. We need to focus on the walker instead, take it down fast."

"Haywire!" chirped Devros, fishing out a few canister from his harness and wiggling them about. "Mess up' em pretty circuits long enough to do some real damage."

"Pennette used all our melta charges on that gate of theirs," complained Nius. "We don't have anything that packs a punch."

The spunky trooper punched her squad mate in the shoulder, hard. When that failed to express her point she shrugged, "Had to be done, flanking threat."

The wraithlord turned its bulbous head as it walked towards them. The conspirators fell silent until it had completed its circuit and turned away. They let out a communally held breath.

"Ok, then." Sigismund slowly got to his knees and lit his power gladius. "This is what we'll do."

…

Haywire grenade in hand, Remi begrudgingly spearheaded Sigismund's ridiculous plan. He traveled through the cracks between dimensions and materialized along the wraithlord's shoulder, letting the crackling ordinance emit its crippling discharge. Groaning between clenched teeth, Remi suffered deep burns as he held the grenades against the giants head.

The construct swayed then stumbled, dropping to its knees. The ground shook as it dropped, leaving its Nostromo stowaway holding on for dear life. It struggled to right itself, clumsily keeping its balance like a drunken sailor. Remi blinked out of existence again a curse on his lips.

_Gob Slayer_ spoke, and its roar was mighty. A carefully placed anti-material bolt round slammed into the wraithlord's knee joint. The first chipped the wraithbone plates, the second scored a gouge, and the third pierced the armored shell and wrecked the inner joint.

All the while, Sigismund led the charge. The wraithlord reached out to swat its pesky attackers, but with little success. The mangled knee joint should have kept it down, but the creature was no mindless construct. Deep within its infinity circuit lied the soul memories of an Eldar hero. It plunged its blade into the yielding earth and used it to finally rise.

The shoulder mounted weapon spluttered, the haywire grenade effects still lingering. Sigismund's gaggle met at its feet, firing their useless weapons in the hopes of scoring a lucky hit. They scattered as the construct raised a mighty fist and pounded the ground like a hammer meeting an anvil. The shockwave sent them reeling.

The cloaked shape of Devros, canister in hand, returned to his feet and flung his grenade high into the air to meet the wraithlord's chest. The cylinder crackled and shot bright lances of electricity. The wraithlord slumped once again, losing its grip on its massive sword and crashing to the ground.

From the safety of the brush, Sola and her bodyguard fired their weapons in an attempt to exploit structural weaknesses, but only the facto's weapon managed to even dent the creature's shell.

The commotion finally reached the meditating Eldar. Her body twitched languidly as consciousness returned.

Sigismund hurried, darting between the construct's flailing limbs to hack at the less protected knee joint of its remaining leg. The sword's power field burned and crackled as he stabbed with the weapon again and again, the weapon driven onward by the power armor's enhanced strength. The results were disappointing.

The storm troopers maneuvered around the fallen giant, whose senses were even now recovering from the haywire's effect. It pushed its upper body up, twisting its shoulders to fire hails of shuriken. Pennette was left flat footed as the hail of razor sharp projectiles swept towards her, her hands still filled with krak grenades, which had up to now been of little avail against the great construct. Before the storm of slicing slivers could rend the trooper, Nius darted forward and tackled her. Whistling projectiles slashed by them as they landed in a heap.

The troopers tangled, Pennette resenting Nius's intervention and shoving him off her. When he rolled aside limply, she paused. His armor was covered with embedded shuriken. Without his helmet, which he had abandoned, his head had been dangerously vulnerable. Despite this Nius hadn't hesitated to plunge into enemy fire to save Pennette. His mangled flesh testified to the cost of his sacrifice. The woman cursed angrily, stinging tears welling in her eyes. Battle instincts took over and she was on her feet once more, giving the construct a harder target to track, but the sight of her squad mate's shredded face was seared into her mind.

Barr hadn't seen Nius go down. He was circling around to the wraithlord's blind side to deliver the last of the haywire grenades. Luckily, by the time it detonated, stunning the ancient revenant once more, the construct had all but been crippled. The wraithlord clawed at the ground, its shoulder mounted weapons spiting fire sporadically in all directions.

Great billowing flames of arcane hues signaled Remi's return to the fight. He was unleashing the lashing currents of warp from his navigator eye. In one hand, he gripped a spent vial, its mysterious effects allowing him to channel vast amounts of energies without collapsing from the strain.

The wraith lord was regaining the last of its functions, but it was too late. The giant had fallen, and Sigismund and his allies were now climbing over it, firing their weapons point blank at exposed sections. Individually, the Imperials could never hurt the ancient soul, but together they swarmed the creature and dealt it a thousand cuts.

The wraithlord defended itself the only way it could, all dignity lost to the vermin on its back. The construct rolled, casting those threading its hallowed surface back to the ground and threatening to crush already there beneath its bulk. No matter the efforts of the broken ancient, the Imperials rallied and eventually, such harm was visited upon the construct that its infinity circuit shattered and the venerated revenant stilled.

The giant slumped into an unmoving lump. All signs of sentience gone. The battle was won.

Crackling lightning rode ethereal winds, pouring in sheets around the victorious warriors. Devros was struck and dropped into a great gouge left behind by the wraithlord's efforts, unconscious. The scion was thrown from the construct's back, his power armor shrouded in the smoky coils of overloaded systems. The storm troopers were quicker, using the giant carcass as cover from the lashing psychic storm which erupted in their midst. They kept their heads down, Barr noticing for the first time the unmoving body of Nius out in the field, a mutilated shadow of the man he had been moments before.

Slivers of the eldritch storm manifested within the heart chamber as Caille rose into the air, carried aloft on the psychic eminence of the world-spirit. The ritual was complete. The world-spirit was tamed.

Farseer Caille of Craftworld Biel-tan was free from her all-consuming mindlock. The world's crystal matrix, and all its accumulated psychic resonance, was now at her beck and call. Over New Pariden, a great storm of unearthly beauty signaled the beginning of the end.

The mon-keigh had failed.


	17. Chapter 17

_**Into the Breach:**_

_**Part 17**_

The emergency sirens of Imperial Guard command wailed to life. Josephine Della held her breath. From the tall arching windows, the sky was alight with frighteningly vivid colors. Blue and purple lightning struck, engulfing entire buildings in phantom flames. A vast wall of swirling fog suddenly manifested and began to close onto the city.

The colonels of the defending regiments stood mouth agape. The staff took a moment longer to realize that death was upon them, stopping in their tracks to witness their doom. Josephine had relinquished her assistance hours before when the assembled commanders had filled the strategium. She knew these Persephonian patriarchs would not be as understanding as her husband, and so she had left them to their duties.

The noble lady clutched her breaking heart and uttered a silent prayer for her husband. The storm did not only herald her death, but announced her husband's failure to avert this disaster. Only in death does duty end, Josephine knew. She felt a sobbing anguish rise, but crushed it behind her storm grey eyes. She would be reunited with her lover soon, and she would meet him with her head held high. The strength of her character demanded nothing less.

-/-/-/-

The howls of desperation cleaved the men from the monsters. Nostromo house guard stood stock still, guarding the confines of the navigator embassy. Death was no terror for the indentured servants. Their masters were less resolute however, for they could feel the storm ache to consume for their souls.

The trio of navigators were paltry examples of the ancient -and often said corrupt- Nostromo bloodline. The first clawed at the drapes with bejeweled fingers. The other drooled incoherently, his fate dawning in his fat skulls. The last wailed a dirge for her parted sanity.

Remi had been right. They were all rejected scions. What good were such navigators against the empyrean's denizen, if they could not even face their mortality? What purpose could such failures hold for the greatest noble houses in the galaxy? Their fate had always been to die, forgotten.

-/-/-/-

Evangeline gripped the balustrade firmly. At her side, Lucretia had slithered from her lair once more to witness the inevitable failure of their brother. The eldest sister couldn't help but smirk.

"Say again," ordered the young captain. "Confirm last report."

The Mistress of Etheric glanced at her instruments once more, though she needed not. "The extinction event has reached its culmination. All systems read vast warp signatures and psychic anomalies centered on New Pariden."

"Father should have headed my warnings. Sigismund has gambled the lives of every person on that world, and lost." Lucretia crossed her arms.

"He has not failed yet." Evangeline slipped a scroll from its casing -Sigismund's last orders. She knew well the content of the scroll for she had penned it at his request, along with many others. Evangeline handed the scroll over to Lucretia. "You often said that our brother did not take his responsibilities seriously, that he played with other's lives and honor; what you failed to see, sister, was that his own life and honor were always staked first."

Lucretia broke the seal, wary of any trickery on her sly brother's part. What she found was something entirely more troubling.

The youngest of the siblings quelled her quivering voice and spoke the foreboding command, even though every fiber of her being fought against it. "Master of ordinance, concentrate all available missile batteries on the following coordinates." Evangeline signed her brother's warrant with a few runes of her command lectern. Acknowledgements echoed across the deck as junior officers relayed the battery orders and prepared firing solutions. Lucretia finally let the scroll fall from her fingertips.

"He'll die…" said Lucretia, words heavy with unfulfilled promised.

Evangeline blinked back the stinging tears. She stood straight, the cuffs of her uniform pressed against the small of her back. The youth received confirmation of the batteries' preparedness. "And the woman he loves. The woman you pursued as a traitor, my friend, and a loyal servant of the Dynasty."

Lucretia's heart was torn in indecision. Victory was poised for the taking, but it would not carry the catharsis she desired. Even in his defeat, Sigismund would deny her satisfaction.

"Not like this… Damn you Sigs, this is not how you'll settle this score." Lucretia stepped towards the command lectern and pushed her sister aside. The eldest was familiar with her vessel and its armament, much more so than her siblings. Evangeline regained her balance and dignity. She was was about to stop Lucretia when the woman met her gaze. "The spread you ordered will obliterate his position. The temple and everything along with it will be dust."

"That was his order," said Evangeline. The youth needed to regain control of the lectern, but hesitated to strike her sister for fear it would spark a ship-wide mutiny. "Save new Pariden, no matter the cost. He ordered the absolute destruction of the ritual site, should he fail to stop the storm from breaking." Evangeline let Sigismund's last command hang, giving her sister a chance to explain herself.

Lucretia simply ignored her sibling's magnanimity, trapped within her own world.

"Always playing the hero, our brother." Lucretia input her commands and stepped back from the lectern. "Well, not this time."

-/-/-/-/-

The eldritch storm ripped through the heart chamber of the world-spirit temple. It was but a sliver of the true storm's power, but its effects were devastating. Like a broiling cauldron, the souls of the Imperial guardsmen evaporated leaving empty husks behind.

Few -and mostly lucky- soldiers found themselves out of the roaring winds' grasp. They clung to their minds as ethereal lightning smote their companions. Their fortunes were temporary however, for nothing within the temple would survive the wrath of the Eldar gestalt.

Trevin and his command squad hunkered in their crater. The slithering psychic blades of the storm caressed their psyche, flaying their ephemeral essence from its material prison. Whether by instinct, or sheer obstinacy, the survivors of Kursk fared better than most. Steld clasped at her body, hoping against all hope to assuage the great void which devoured her insides. She could feel the trickling of her essence slowly seep away as the winds called, feel herself slipping in its currents.

Lancer appeared by her side, his wiry frame a tower parting the spirit winds. He met her pained gaze and draped his body protectively over hers, as the medic had so many times before. The noble born son was a wretch by most account, but as Steld looked into his wavering eye she could see the strength and dedication behind the inbred mess. His buffering presence gave the medic a little more strength to fight the titanic pull of the void. Somehow, the bulwark of another's soul lessened the horror of the storm. No lone soul could survive the psychic maelstrom, but she was not alone.

One by one they fell to their knees and used their bodies to shelter one another. The fighting iron in their hearts knew only war, and its prosecution, service and sacrifice. Melot pressed his chest against the curve of Steld's back, his sanguine mirth defying the sword of Damocles. Blood mad Corvin barked at the storm, breaking the tides of mystic might upon his psychotic will. Trevin draped the cloak of his office upon his huddled friends as he joined them. Though the fabric did little against the psychic howls, it resonated with the sympathetic truth of its bearer. As each would die for one another, their leader would sacrifice everything that they need naught.

Huddled and grasping, armored by will and faith, the souls of those refusing to be taken kicked and screamed against the coming of the end.

-/-/-/-

Through her scope, Sola watched the Eldar Farseer sweep away Sigs and his companions with contemptuous ease. Ascending into the air on reality defying power, Farseer Caille was the eye of the storm.

Sola choked back panic as Sigismund collapsed. He fell, wreathed in smoldering fumes, from the wraithlord's chassis to the ground. One by one, with lighting or furious gales of mind numbing wind, the rogue trader's entourage was defeated.

Chastity let a firm hand fall to her mistress' shoulder, stopping her from rising. Sola's mind screamed its logic, but the facto's heart would have none of it. Her bodyguard's power armor was all that kept the woman in place.

"You mustn't mistress. It is better you take the shot and hope it sticks. I'll go."

Sola watched the faceless helm of her life-ward nod, understanding evident in the simple gesture. The child-warrior's devotion was absolute. Chastity rose from her firing crouch and began to run towards certain doom. She would buy her mistress the time she needed for a kill shot, whatever the cost.

"Chastity… Good luck," offered the facto, heart in her throat. The vox channel was thick with half chewed regret. Sola took a calming breath as Chastity hungrily ate up the distance between herself and the Farseer, who bristled incandescently with psychic power.

Then, the world split.

Had the God-Emperor strode the surface of the world, the result would have no doubt been similar. The ground shook, sending numbing waves along Sola's marrow. Again and again, the mighty fist of god pounded into the Eldar temple and its surrounding. The rhythm so violent, so all consuming, that Sola's heart was snared. But the pain of the missed heartbeat was nothing in comparison to the groaning of the world's shell.

Massive chasms split the domed world of the temple. Great slabs of alien material wrestled themselves free from the heights and came tumbling down. The air ignited in the passing of the debris, the roar so mighty that sight and sound melded together in cacophonous confusion. The devastation surrounded Sola, and though a silent part of her might recorded the carnage, her every other senses were stunned into befuddled stupor.

The flames raged, gliding along the immaterial winds, a conflagration as apocalyptical as it was purifying. Wrath and contempt came barreling down unto the heads of the unworthy. The vile and despicable xenos shared the brunt of the heavenly sanction with those who were found wanting in the execution of their duties. There were no excuses for failure. Even death did not lighten the burden of duty; It only shared it with its successor.

Sola felt her grip on consciousness fade as the world burned; the last of her thoughts were torn between love lost and deep relief, for the storm died with them.

….

Darkness surrounded him. The sound of his labored breath was his only companion. Slowly, as consciousness cemented itself, distant sounds drew his attention. They were muted by the thick ceramite helmet trapping his head and often muffled by his wheezing gasps, but they were there. A tentative movement confirmed his suspicions. His armor's power pack had failed. Sigismund was laden in a body fitting sarcophagus of armor plates.

It took a few moments to coax his bruised and battered body into obeisance. His arms, heavy as led, fumbled awkwardly at his collar seal. As the seal broke, the habitual hiss of escaping air was absent. How long had he been starved of oxygen, he wondered? Finally, and with great difficulty, Sigismund ripped his helmet free and gasped for fresh air.

Instead, he sucked in a lungful of choking smoke, tinged with charcoal. It was hot and heavy, sending him into a coughing fit. The scene around him was very different than he remembered, unrecognizable even. Masonry the size of auto-cars littered the surroundings. Flames licked the greenery, now little more than fuel for the fire, and the ceiling was split like a cracked sky. A strange mix of smoky sunlight dared to peek into the shattered shell of the once pristine xenos temple.

Grunting, his body aching from the effort, Sigismund managed to drag his bulk into a sitting position. Once, eons ago, warriors had fought in armor clad. Some still did on feudal worlds, Keever coming foremost to Sigismund's thoughts. The scion struggled to get to his feet, the extra fifty-kilos ill balanced in its unpowered state. He almost fell backwards, the top-heavy power pack forcing him to lean back against a large chunk of singed wraithbone. Sigismund hoped the others had fared better, even though surviving his backup plan was a miracle all its own.

An injured Eldar ambled into view, using her singing spear to steady her steps. She was bleeding vivid scarlet down the pale skin of her silky scalp. Sigismund raised his clunky arm-mounted storm bolter, but the armor's sensor plates were inactive, the weapon useless without the trigger.

Farseer Caille brushed against debris, her tattered robes still faintly alight with licking flames. A bright smear of arterial followed her along the fallen debris. The wounded survivors eyed each other for a moment.

"Your folly is breath taking," the Farseer spat weakly. The Eldar's wounds ran deep, part of her armor had splintered into her flesh and her stance showed signs of broken bones. "Your actions exemplify how your race will doom the galaxy."

Sigismund tried to shrug, finally deciding to start the long process of shedding his second-skin. "Isn't it time you dropped the holier-than-thou attitude, witch? It's over, you lost." The scion dropped a sculpted gauntlet to the ground, the hefty boltgun attached to it feeling like a ton.

The Eldar's blood choked laughter made Sigismund pause.

"Wayward children… is that how you hear our words? You lack the sharpness of sense to understand our language, and your tongue is so…. Limited. I suppose the result was inevitable." The Farseer let herself slide to the ground in an ungainly heap. Her brilliantly decorated weapon fell from her fingers, the strength needed to hold it too much to spare. "Of all the species in this galaxy, yours holds the most potential. Ours was wrought for purpose, a singular destiny. Yours can be anything… yet here we are."

Sigismund disengaged his power pack, the hefty hunk of ceramite dropping to the ground with a muted thud. The crackling of not so distant fire was punctuated by the lazy wandering of smoke hanging in the air. "I didn't expect a compliment from your kind, Eldar."

Caille shook her head softly, limp hands resting in the lap of her messy, cross legged meditation. "Even now you misunderstand, human." Her once luminescent eyes were pale reflections, their oval edges hidden under heavy lids. "Your relentless, self-destructive stubbornness will draw the entire galaxy to its destruction."

Caille sighed as more of Sigismund's armor was abandoned, he now stood in the slick body glove that lurked beneath the powered armor. The scion approached the dying Eldar. She no longer posed a threat, that much was plain to see. Her broken body was slowing down, abandoning this world for the next.

"All you needed was patience, and you could have filled the galaxy with wonders instead of war." The Farseer took a deep breath, longer than should have been possible. She let her mind wander the ravaged battlefield, finding few of her own still living. Others, she found surprisingly resilient still.

"I'm sorry it came to this," Sigismund admitted. "Your Craftworld, my Dynasty, they should never have met. The void is a great and empty place. We shouldn't have met, strange that we did.

"Fate," whispered Caille. "Is strange indeed…"

The Farseer felt the beckoning of her seer stones. The mournful spirit stones welcomed one of their own, easing Caille's journey to the psychic anchor. But the Eldar resisted, for she had not yet accomplished her duty. The world needed to return to its keepers. Whether this happened by bolt or blade; by obfuscation or deceit, it mattered not. The Farseer knew another mean existed, it was a shame that this last hope was so often over looked. Truth, after all, did not belong in a galaxy aflame.

"The shroudling still lives, young prince. Take her and your men-at-arms. Take them far away. Or this place will be your grave, as surely as it was mine."

Sigismund frowned at the enigmatic seer's words as she slumped. The scion reached to catch the Eldar before she slid to the floor. He eased the dying xenos to the ground. Sigismund held no love for the many xenos who opposed mankind's manifest destiny to rule the stars, but he did not simply despise them for the sake of it, unlike his core-ward cousins.

"Tell me, human." Every word was a daunting task, her life persisting by dint of her monumental will. "My kind has been fighting the death of our species since before yours took to the stars; if it is weakness that drove us to the edge, is it strength that keeps us from it? Will you do the same?"

Sigismund felt the last of the Eldar's life ebb away, her mind caressing his in passing. Caille's last suspicious concerns followed it. Alien thoughts flowed as an incomprehensible streams of consciousness, but Sigismund grasped a few. An ancient mechanism ticked along with clockwork precision; familiar incents burned unwatched; the Lucius crest, bleeding thick rivulets of darkened blood. As the vision passed, new light bloomed within the confines of the Farseer's spirit stone. It was soft and warm, the color of caring amber, laced with fearful streaks of blue.

The scion watched the listless form of the wounded Eldar with a displaced sense of confusion. Here laid the enemy which would have visited doom upon his kind, yet a saddening regret followed her passing. Sigismund understood her calling. His own was very similar. None of this tragedy -this massacre- had been personal. It had all been in service of an ideal. Sigismund could not fault the Eldar for her commitment. In death she had felt the same, the conflict a great sadness nestled in her bosom. It was naught but a maddening brawl between waning Empires, desperate to claw their way out of the abyss. It was a wonder if they even knew what harm they did each other in the process.

The scion was ignorant of Eldar's funeral mores, so he offered her his own.

Sigismund retrieved the warrior seer's spear and folded her hands around it. He wiped the blood from her face as best he could, the Eldar's hauntingly serene expression at odds with her ravaged surroundings. A lesser man would have robbed her of the gems she bore. They glinted softly, constellations held frozen in the grasp of time. Whether they truly held the souls of the departed or not, the Eldar believed it so. In death, all warriors were due respect. Sigismund left the shimmering jewels behind as he made his way through the ever thickening fog of war.

….

Sigismund didn't have to wander long. Shrouded forms ambled towards him. The scion flexed his battered body, struggling to free it of its numbing pain, and waited to see if the harbingers were friend or foe. His heart fluttered as haggard faces resolved. Barr and Pennette shouldered one another, followed by the misshapen head of the twist catcher, which had suffered from the falling debris. How the bounty hunter found the grit to walk on his own was astounding.

The scion's mouth became painstakingly dry as he scanned the survivors of the retinue. Tried as he might, he could not see her. "Where is Sola?"

The battered soldiers stared with empty eyes, the bombardment having driven away their senses.

"The vice-factotum?" grumbled Barr, seemingly unable to manage more than a croak. "comms are down. We don't know who's still alive…"

"She was farthest from the storm or the blast," offered Pennette emptily, soulless cold in her eyes. The loss of her friends inured her to the pain of others. "She had the best odds of survival of any of us..."

Only, it wasn't true. Sigismund had ordered a concentrated barrage on his power armor's locator. He knew, that should the worst arose, Evangeline would carry out his wishes. He had planned to keep Sola away if failure loomed, keep her out of the blast range. But the bombardment had not fallen as he had indicated. By the looks of the shattered temple, the blasts had been arranged to kill everything but Sigismund.

"Did you know?" came the accusatory words of Remi. He stepped out of the fog behind the entourage, walking uncaringly through the patchwork fires which still hungrily consuming the heart chamber's flora. His tattered robes hung from him, and in his arms laid Sola's supine body. Crunching footsteps followed him. Chastity stepped out of the haze alert, the muzzle of her bolter scanning the area.

"This was you're doing, wasn't it?" Glistening streams flowed from the Nostromo's eyes and mouth. It was impossible to tell whether it was tears or simply his transparent blood, but his shaking body testified to the wracking pain he held back. "You would have killed us all for your stupid glory mongering, without even asking us?"

The allegation hung heavy in the crackling air. Barr's murderous eyes slowly found Sigismund's. "Is this true, did you arrange for this bombardment?"

"I didn't think we'd fail," admitted the pain scion. "It was a precaution. We would have all been dead by then." Sigismund's usually authoritative voice was laced with defensive doubt.

The storm trooper's contempt was visible. Soldiers fought and died to protect their homeland. They fought and died for the people they loved, far away never to be seen again. They fought and died for a covenant sworn to the God-Emperor in the knowledge that no other means would do. To misuse their oaths was a gross injustice.

"Then why the gak did we come down here? Why did Ferraro and Nius have to die if we could have just bombed the damned place?" spat Pennette.

"Because it was quicker this way, because I thought we could do it." Sigismund said weakly in his defense. "Because we had to be decisive… we had to confirm success…" Sigismund's excuses were rapidly weaknening.

Remi's visage twisted. He could have easily gone through life eschewing attachments. It had, after all, been his de-facto plan for dealing with the idiocy of the unwashed ramble. But despite himself, he had found a companion in Sola. Strong, smart, curious, and most of all… trustworthy. She had been his friend. His only friend.

The glowering light of Remi's true eye bubbled to life. Torn fabric was all that held back the unnatural beckoning of the navigator's warp eye. It would be so easy. Remi only had to blink and Sigismund, the man-child whose fantasies of glory had killed the only person to look upon him without judgment, would die.

Remi took a long breath and closed his eyes. As the earthy scent of charring wood filled his lungs, he shook the last of his pretenses away, along with the thin hood which hid his navigator's eye.

Instincts kicked in. The storm troopers averted their eyes; the concussed Devros covered his sight with a bloodied hand; Chastity stood safely behind Remi, eyes filled with pain and righteous anger, did nothing to stop the navigator. Only Sigismund met the mutant's eye, his once bold eyes filled with self-loathing and regret.

Then, Sola gasped for breath.

….

Halfway across the world, a silent figure sat shrouded in a shifting hued cloak. His physical wounds had been healed by the tenders of Isha back on Craftworld Biel-Tan. The soul mending arts of the devout had not been enough to sooth his fevered psyche however, and Elamnyl had taken to the paths once more to get lost.

He had done what he could for his kin, for Mauryon, for Caille, for Biel-Tan. Now, he needed to do something for himself. Across his lap laid the rifle he had carried for centuries, along with the heavier burden of Uliassen's spirit stone. Even now, the spirit within struggled to fill him with forgiveness and love. All were surpassed by the father's self-loathing for his failure.

A failure whose redress was a stone throw away. The world was sleeping where the pathfinder meditated, and within the fire lit cave secreted away amongst the peeks of this mountain, so was the object of Elamnyl's release.

The beast had been broken by the human's army, and his kind put to the torch. Now alone and bitter, the ork known as Knuckles licked his wounds, moving from place to place to keep his trail muddled. All but the Pathfinder had been able to keep track of the greenskin in the rocky lifeless peeks, though the human scouts had dearly tried.

Elamnyl let his rifle rest against him, its long slender barrel nuzzling his neck. It was a testament to the Hag's weaving which left the pathfinder hesitating. Sorrow ate Elamnyl's soul alive, and no amount of wandering would grant him peace. On the other hand, should indulging in his vengeance prove too much to bare, he might wound his psyche beyond retrieval.

The best thing for the pathfinder would be to let go of this hunt, return his son to the cradle of the infinity circuit, and wander in hopes of calming the storm in his heart. It would no doubt take him decades in and of itself. Or, he could do what was best for the Craftworld and slay the greenskin, end its threat to this world, and subsume himself to spirit of vengeance gnawing at his bones.

The Eldar which had taken to the galaxy and lost himself in it rather than adopt the discipline of a path, was now forced into choosing one. Was he a wounded father burying his son, or a warrior scout of Carftworld Biel-Tan? Was he selfish, or selfless? Was killing the greenskin the right thing to do, or was it the wrong thing?

Elamnyl sat as the wind tossed his robes about him, a small shadow leaving the cave's warmth to wander the cold in search of sparse kindling. The grot sauntered about, a fearful wretch burning with inner devotion for its abuser. It was clearly torn between its desires to free itself with that of safety and the relative security that came with its abuse. Whether greenskin, human, or Eldar, Elamnyl found that the same motivations applied.

What is one, without the whole?

The hulking form of Knuckles scampered to the cave's lip, its body so hot steam rose from its shoulders. What need of a fire did a creature like that have? The bug eyed giant of green meat picked a rock and flung it in the general direction of its grot. A frightened screech answered in the dark, followed by the small creature with an armful of moss and reedy weeds. Knuckles nabbed the little one by the throat and eyed the scavenged kindling. A slobbering comment was uttered and the mountain of muscle put the grot down, patting its head in a semblance of approval.

The two disappeared within the cave, the hulking shadow of Knuckles lingering as he sniffed the air.

Unseen and unmoving, Elamnyl let the mockery of life perform its mimes. When the greenskins had gone from sight, he fetched a belt of plasma grenades and weight it with brooding intent. He had come prepared for this, so why was he still hesitating? The warm pulsing of the emerald green spirit stone in the stock of his rifle answered. Hope and pity washed over him in sympathetic communion.

The pathfinder nodded empathically. Perhaps there was another path, between the selfish and the selfless. Perhaps he could be both father and son; to Ulissen and to Biel-Tan. But to find that path, the ranger would have to question all he knew.

For what was one without the whole; the whole without the one, and destiny without choice.

….

The _Son of Ultramar_'s steward let Sigismund enter. The Lord Dynast's quarters were now more like the medical deck than the powerful man's sanctum. A bandaged and limping scion made his way to his father's side, exhaling in relief as he took a seat by the large vitae-sustaining sarcophagus.

The classically arranged room smelled of sandalwood and coal, muddled only by the pungent machine incense the adepts had hung over the braziers. The sarcophagus was a miracle from the dark age of technology. Within its heart, time was stilled to a trickling stream, and a dying man was attentively monitored a nanosecond at a time. Of course, to Sigismund, it looked nothing like that.

The large coffin was drooling arcane fumes, brass pipes jutting from every surface, with luminous indicators glowing by muted runes. No trace of the man he had once thought of his father could be seen. Sigismund gave the steward a nod and the man left the regent to his privacy.

"Well, Anthonid, we survived another tough scrap." Sigismund patted the large life-sustaining engine as if it could convey the truth of his gesture to the man within. "Your colony is saved." Ancient auguries beeped momentarily, their operations shrouded in secrets the regent couldn't even begin to guess at. Sigismund decided to take it as an acknowledgement.

"The Imperial Guard has been shaken. The regiments lost half their numbers but their commander, Augustus Trevin, has petitioned to levy more recruits from the populace. I tell you, he and his friends have quite the luck. Everyone within a hundred meters of them were found dead, but somehow they survived, every single one of those crazy bastards. Anyway, nothing like a military victory to inspire patriotism, heh old man."

Sigismund leaned back in the sofa chair, the stuffed fabric still painful to brush against. This last little adventure had broken a few more bones, punctured a few organs, and burned twenty percent of his flesh to a molecular degree. Though that last bit was thanks to Remi and his warp fire.

"Trevin is still a little angry at me. Turns out my back up plan cost him as many troops as the Eldar did, at least at the temple. He's not the only one too. Remi won't talk to me, which on a normal day would be a good thing, but Sola considers keeping a working relationship with him a priority. I'm thinking of befriending the bald one to help me get a foot in the door, Meyer I think he's called. Those Nostromo are made though, I'll give you that, didn't think he'd make it but in the end, he did."

A soft whir filled the room and a gush of escaping gas escaped from the casket. Sigismund could see that the stasis engine was piecemeal in places, its pieces replaced many times over its lifetime. You could witness firsthand how much the Imperium had lost, by its patchwork improvisational repairs, a history of forgotten tech and sanctioned remedies.

"Mind you Sola was not too keen on my trick either, but she's a good woman and I think, well I think there's something of a future to be had with her. I don't know what's worst, her disapproving glances or the fact I won't be able to hold her for quite some time. These gene forge treatments take forever to mend flesh, though I'm told it will heal even the scars of the flames. I suspect Remi is pleased with the ponderous speed of my recovery."

Sigismund adjusted his seating position, finding little relief. He eventually stood up and begun pacing around the casket, the flesh of his soles one of the rare places still unmarred in one way or another.

"Women are more complicated than astro-navigational course plotting, I find. Which brings us to why I'm here. I've decided to allow Zenobia to stay aboard the flotilla. I won't be getting married to one of those feudal princesses, either. Tradition be damned in those respects."

Sigismund waited in silence for a sign, a hint of his father's distress. He had honestly believed the system would shut down at the old man's outrage at this break of decorum. But no alarms chimed. No adept hurried within the chamber to attend the stasis engine. Sigismund let out a breath of relief and let his bandaged fingers stroke the sarcophagus' arcane surface.

"Evangeline will retain command of the _Semper Fidelis_, she'll make for a great Shield of the Dynasty. Lucretia on the other hand… is another matter." The regent sighed at length, whimsically wishing he could ignore the entire situation. "She's willing to speak to me, which is nice. But I believe she is not entirely rid of her delusion. I have to admit there might be some truth to her spite. Perhaps my methods have been a little careless… Barr and his little wonder girl surely think so. Mark my word, that Pennette is trouble. A frightfully capable woman though, you would have liked her. She's no mother but…"

Sigismund paused, just as he had done every time he reported to his Dynast. As if the subject could be any easier to approach than with a timeless life-sustaining machine. He had to get it off his chest someday, and if Anthonid somehow survived then this conversation would be much harder to broach. He could do with some practice. The Emperor favors the bold, after all.

Sigismund leaned in to the uncaring casket. "I know Hubert was my real father." His voice nearly cracked at the confession, what eloquence he usually possessed irrevocably absent. A life's worth of questions had been answered by a secret that could never be voiced to the outside world. "What I don't know is why you kept pretending even after all those years. Why you continued on with business as usual; albeit your dour and stoic usual. And I guess I'll never know. Clearly, you were willing to take the secret to your grave…"

The regent straightened up and took a long look at the eastern fringe décor. Sigismund blinked, salty wetness suddenly biting his burned cheek.

"I'll keep your secret old man. The Lion will remain a golden legend. But if I'm to guide this dynasty as you intended I do, some things are going to have to change." Sigismund gathered the trains of his robes over his forearm, dignity an unusually chaffing requirement these days. "Tradition has its place, but we won't be of any service to the Imperium if we keep looking backwards. The part we play lies in the beyond, forward and ever onwards."

With as much majesty as he could muster, Sigismund left the sanctum of the Lord Dynast and closed the doors behind him. His name-father's steward bowed deeply and Sigismund departed, a dynasty to lead into the far reaches of the unknown.

-/-/-/-

The _Son of Ultramar_'s galleries were filled with wonders for the guests to purchase. The steward however, had not come to sample the exotic commodities the many merchant hawked. No, he had come to perform his true duties.

The ship's steward was a glorified appointment, one with enough responsibility to validate its existence but which in truth was a bit of a retirement perk. That was the truth of it, in the Lucius Dynasty anyway, Emperor-knew how other rogue traders went about their business.

The title was also a wonderfully useful excuse to wander the ship and get involved in endless and often times meaningless minutia. Meaningless that is, is you were any other than the ship's Master of Whispers.

The spymaster slipped through the draping veil which covered the clock maker's shop and let his eyes acclimatize to the darkened workshop. The walls were covered in all kinds of time keeping trinkets, from hour glasses containing sands from dead worlds to hololithic chirping birds. The Master of Whispers was not looking for a time piece however. He walked to the service counter and rang the chime resting atop its surface.

An old man with a ragged beard slowly made his way from his perch in the back to his customer's attention. The spymaster cast a telling glance at the rest of the shop and satisfied, fetched a pocket watch from his small hip pouch. The clock maker's brow furrowed as he threw his long cloaking robe over his shoulder, freeing his hands to inspect the proffered watch. It was ancient and traditional, its clockwork innards ticking away with perfect synchronicity.

"He knows," whispered the spymaster as he hunched over the counter, with the pretense of explaining a non-existent flaw in his watch.

The old man grumbled, his clouded eyes hardening. "Does he carry the torch?"

"He does, though he seeks to light different passages," answered the steward.

"So is every Dynast's right." The clock maker flipped the watch over and ran a thumb over the engraving. This time piece had been used in the service of the Dynasty for centuries, the mark of the true Master of Whispers.

"And his woman?" asked the wise artisan.

"Nothing official, but he seems devoted. Truly." The spymaster was a supernal liar, but he now spoke with the only man he would ever be honest with.

"Nothing else from his sisters?" asked the bearded man worriedly.

"Tenuous at best, but loyal still. The youngest serves admirably," Admitted the steward.

A pompadour noble walked into the quaint shop, accompanied by a throng of young mistresses. They wandered about loudly, gawking at the creations of the previous shop's owner. That man now living a life of unbelievable wealth down on Ultra Primaris. The lordly eyes of the bearded man softened as he turned to the aristocratic customer.

"A moment my lord, and I will attend your ever desire. Please, enjoy my craftsmanship while you wait." The old man waved his hand emphatically. The aristo made a point of ignoring the shopkeeper while his coterie of whores cooed at his every word.

The spymaster slipped the pocket watch from the shop keeper's surprisingly supple hands. "How long will you continue this…charade?" the spymaster whispered.

The cold calculating gaze of the Lord Dynast rested upon his Master of Whispers. "As long as I have to."

The two men parted ways as quietly as they had joined, the pompadour aristo following soon after. The Lion returned to his labors. He was not a good watch maker, but he appreciated the precision involved in the crafting of time pieces. He even enjoyed it, now savoring a practice which would have been a gross indulgence in his prior life. In truth, the old ruler was tired. The last void battle had nearly killed him. He had truly lingered on death door. For days his fate seemed uncertain, but it had also opened his eyes.

His inability to father another child had put his dynasty at risk. God-Emperor knew he had tried to sire a boy to replace his false son, but to no avail. He cast the blame on his second wife and moved on, honing the bastard into a man who could lead. The man however, turned out to be more like his flesh and blood parents than Anthonid had expected. The Dynast would soon know if good rearing trumped good breeding. Hopefully, the former would prevail. Otherwise, Anthonid would have to consider a great many injustices, and the squandered resources they embodied.

Sigismund, a boy he had come to respect for his strengths, would have to be terminated to make place for another. His ravenkin and his hillside sisters, who could never win the senatorum's respect, would have to be subjugated or cast away. All this for the memory of Anthonid's ancestors and their traditions, which he had sworn to uphold in spirit if not word. If Sigismund failed to prove himself in the eyes of his hidden lord, a great many investments would never bear fruit.

Anthonid gathered the separate pieces of a Jokaero artifice, sharpened tools and magnifying lenses at hand. He began to scratch at the surface of the timepiece, cleaning grooves and setting gears into place with diminutive pincers.

The Lion of Ultramar wanted nothing more than to clumsily learn this trade, enjoying the peace and quiet, along with the unwavering focus it provided.

But the Dynasty came first. It always came first.

Well look at this, if you've come this far then I wish to extend my fondest gratitude for slogging through this first draft of Into the Breach. It was a fun little experiment, trying to write and edit a chapter a week. I'm sure you'll noticed I barely managed one and hardly the other. But you, my dear reader, put up with my nonsenses admirably.

As the summer closes, like all summers before it, I return to my lowly employ in addition to (will it ever end) finishing my thesis. No new content will be up until well into 2016 and it remains to be seen in the comments if anyone will care to see the final edited version of this story. It was a bit too long, and changed pace and themes along the way like a fashion model changes clothes, but that's when you get in first –and mostly improvisational- drafts. But enough of my ramblings. Again.

Thank you!


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